Author 




Title 



Imprint. 



16-— 47372-2 



HASTY EECOGMTION 



REBEL BELLiaEEENCY, 



OUR RIGHT TO COMPLAII^ OF IT. 



GEORGE BEMIS. 




s BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY A. WILLIAMS & CO. 

No. 100 Washington Street. 



FAL 9 



Entered, according to Act of Congi-ess, in the year 1S65, by 

GEORGE BE MIS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



2^ ^^73 



CTambntigt press. 
Dakik and Metcalk. 



PREFACE. 



The following pamphlet, I am free to acknowledge, is both contro- 
versial and American : — controversial, so far as it seeks to meet and 
answer the new position set up by Earl Russell, the British Sec- 
retary of State for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of his Ministry, and by 
Eax'l Russell's juridical champion, " Historicus," of the London Times, 
that the recognition of the American rebels as a belligerent Power was 
a necessity and not a choice ; and American, so far as it looks at this 
new plea in avoidance from an American point of view. Yet the 
writer cherishes a hope that his readers will find in the following pages 
something besides controversy and Americanism. He trusts that his 
labors will help throw light for the purposes of permanent history 
upon one of the great questions of public law of the ninetenth cen- 
tury, namely, whether the action of the two great Western Powers of 
Europe in so speedily raising the Confederate secessionists to the rank 
of a belligerent power, — thereby, perhaps, warming into life and 
helping to walk alone the most gigantic and immoral sedition in history, 
and inaugurating the bloodiest and most cruel civil war since the 
Christian era, — was either a friendly or a justifiable measure ; friend- 
ly, considering that it was apparently set in motion by one of the great 
heads of the English liberal party, a party whose antecedents were all 
in favor of popular rights, and committed wutliout a reserve to uncom- 
promising hostility against negro slavery, and seconded on the South- 
ern side of the British channel by that France which had stood god- 

(iii) 



IV PREFACE. 

father to American liberties, and without whose aid Americans may 
freely admit that they would never have been independent unless after 
a long lapse of intermediate years, — or justijiahle, because as an inter- 
national precedent, when can civil rebellion ever be justly counteracted 
and crushed out, if not in such a case as that of this American contest ? 

— An assault, as the second greatest leader in the rebellion himself 
characterized it, upon " the best and freest government, that the sun of 
heaven ever shone upon." 

In my attempted elucidation of this great historic question, I am 
well aware to how easy a refutation I expose myself (if I am wrong), 
when I venture to call in question Earl Russell's statement, that the 
law-advisers of the Crown in recommending the issue of the Queen's 
proclamation of neutrality, and so the recognition of Confederate bel- 
ligerency, grounded themselves upon the Amei'ican proclamation of 
blockade as an overruling necessity which left no choice for British 
action. If the Crown lawyers really gave such advice and the For- 
eign Secretary is not mistaken in his recollection, nothing will be 
easier than to produce their written opinion, — if, in the judgment of 
the British Cabinet, its own reputation for candor seems sufficiently 
involved to require it. Even then, hoAvever, I feel confident that my 
positions will hold good in three particulars : 

(1.) That the Crown lawyers, in any advice given prior to May 6th 
1861, gave an opinion upon an unofficial and probably imperfect copy 
of President Lincoln's pi'oclamation ; 

(2.) That if they made the American blockade an important element 
in their opinion, it was only in the sense that it entitled not required 
Her Majesty's Government to proclaim neutrality and belligerency ; 
and, 

(3.) That they never advised that a manifesto of a future blockade, 

— not then enforced or known to be enforced, and which while directed 
against insurgent subjects, was so far municipal and M«-international 
that it professed to treat as pirates those rebellious subjects and all 
others found guilty of any adoption of Jefferson Davis's letters of 
marque and reprisal, — required the neutral power of Great Britain to 



PREFACE. V 

regard such manifesto as tantamount to the existence of a war and 
thereupon to recognize two belligerent parties, equally entitled to neu- 
tral consideration. 

If on this latter point the record shall make against me, I shall 
appeal with full confidence from the judgment of English lawyers to 
the enlightened opinion of European and American publicists. 

But, on the other hand, I venture, with all the confidence in the 
world, to enforce my other position with regard to the blockade procla- 
mation, that provided the Crown lawyers gave the advice attributed to 
them by Earl Russell, and in that connection, yet the British Govern- 
ment, represented by the Foreign Secretary, never made any account of 
that advice ; and, that the true reason for British action in acknowledging 
Rebel belligerency and Rebel equality was that set forth in Earl Rus- 
sel's despatch to Lord Lyons of May 6th, 1861, in which the Foreign 
Secretary declares in effect, that the American Union has gone to 
pieces, that the Southern Government has duly organized itself, and 
that Her Majesty's Government does not wish any secret to be made 
of its recognition and acceptance of these facts in its future dealings 
with the " late Union." 

I ask the reader's special attention to this despatch, which I am con- 
fident that no advice of the Crown lawyers and no apology of juridical 
journalists can explain away or render unimportant. Unlike, too, some 
of the other diplomatic documents which I am obliged to quote in their 
excerpted state, as prepared for publication, this State-paper is not a 
mere " extract." The whole of its text is given, pure and simple, un- 
der the official imprimatur of a Blue Book ; and I presume to say, 
that that text will stand in history as a truer key to British intervention 
at the first stage of the American struggle, in the shape of what was 
called British Neutrality, than any new gloss first devised or first made 
much account of, as late as March, 1865. 

I deem it highly probable that the Foreign Secretary's friends will 
say for him, or he for himself, in extenuation of this State-paper, that 
it was a hasty document, penned under the influence of what seemed 
at that moment, a dark juncture in American affairs; and that it was 



VI PREFACE. 

only subsequent events which rendered the opinions therein put forth 
inopportune and unfounded. Perhaps Earl Russell's friends will even 
urge in his behalf that he knew more, at that crisis of the rebellion, 
of the dangers which threatened the American Union, than the Ameri- 
can Government itself. If so, I would ask. Did Earl Russell get that 
knowledge from Rebel conspirators and from traitors against their own 
government ? Not that I would necessarily imply that as a diplomatist 
he had not a right to listen to any plots that American conspirators might 
see fit to break to his ear ; but if he had had that superior knowledge^ 
would it not have been an act of national friendliness, which would 
have redounded to the advantage of the British nation to all posterity, 
if he had imparted it to the government of the United States and put 
them on their guard against unforeseen perils from a gigantic plot of 
treason ? 

But, supposing the Foreign Secretary to have had no such illegiti- 
mate soui'ce of information opened to him, or not to have availed him- 
self of it, if opened, as that suggested ; yet, if in any way he had a 
better information as to the magnitude of the dangers which were about 
to assail the United States, than the United States Government itself, — 
had he a right, I ask, to act upon those threatened dangers till they had 
actually come to pass and wrought out their evil results ? Had he a 
right to declare a state of belligerency as actually existing, when he 
only saw it as a future contingency, however inevitable ? Had he a 
right to say to the United States, — You are gone to pieces ; you are 
hopelessly separated into fragments ; your rebels are as duly an organ- 
ized a government as yourself; — when the American people had hard- 
ly hegmi, as yet, to dream of the possibility of Separation, much less of the 
dire necessity of Civil War ? 

The Foreign Secretary avows in this dispatch of the Gth of May, 
1861, that he knew what a tremendous struggle might be in store for 
the American Republic and the momentous consequences which a dec- 
laration of European neutrality would draw after it; — why so hasty, 
then, in taking such a fearful step ? Would it have done any harm 
to have waited twenty-four hours, or even eight days, to get speech 



PKEFACE. VU 

with tlie new Amei'ican Minister ? But, instead of waiting foi' INIr. 
Adams's explanatory statements and authentic intelligence, Earl Rus- 
sell, as appears by this dispatch of the .6th of May, did not even wait 
for his own envoy's. While in one breath he is complaining that the 
delay of the steamers or the interruption of railroad and telegraph 
communication between Washington and New York has cut him off 
from the latest (and one would say most indispensable) intelligence 
from the seat of war, he is announcing before the close of the docu- 
ment, that he is prepared to act and take all the consequences of the 
step of " investing " the Rebels " with all the rights and prerogatives 
belonging to belligerents." 

There may, possibly, have been no unfriendliness, — no positive 
ill-wishing, — in all this ; but I appeal to the world, whether it was not 
unduly precipitate, and whether it can be excused by any plea of una- 
voidable necessity ? 

Boston, May 30, 1865. 



Note. It seems proper to add, for the information of a certain portion of 
my readers, that a considerable part of the following paper appeared as a 
communication in the columns of the Boston Daily Advertiser, of May 3d, 
by the favor of whose editors I was thus enabled to come before the public 
■with so much of my matter, at an earlier day of publication, and before a 
larger circle of readers than I should otherwise have had an opportunity of 
addressing. 

To those who took an interest in that communication I would say that I 
have added about a third part of new matter ; giving {inter alici) the remark- 
able despatch, in full, of Earl Russell, of May 6th, above commented on. I 
also subjoin, in another connection, some further strictures upon one of the 
closing paragraphs of that despatch, the significance of which escaped my at- 
tention at that time. I have also added another piece of evidence teUing 
against the Foreign Secretary's regard for the American proclamation of block- 



^^^ PREFACE. 

ade, which I derive from his Blairgowrie speech of September, 1863, in reply 
to Mr. Sumner, at the Cooper Institute in New York, the same month. For 
the reference to this piece of confirmatory proof I am indebted to a clerical 
friend who shows his appreciation of "things to come" by keeping himself 
well informed in public events " that now are." 

I have also added to my main discussion, a more detailed reply to Histori- 
cus's communication to the Times, in defence of British Neutrality; thinking 
that, as I subjoin that communication to this article by way of Appendix, I 
may justly avail myself of this occasion to add some further criticisms which 
would have too much swollen my former communication for the columns of a 
daily newspaper. To those who are interested in seeing justice done to the 
speculations and statements of Historicus, I would suggest as the logical mode 
of estimating the fairness of my strictures upon them to commence the peru- 
sal of the pamphlet with the Appendix. In that way at least, by reading, the 
eminent English publicist's paper entire and in one connection, they wiU get 
a specimen of his racy style and bold rhetoric. 

Perhaps it is due to the fairness of Uterary and legal discussion to add that 
I have also availed myself of the present occasion to correct several errors of 
quotation from the language of others, and some inaccuracies of expression of 
my own, which were overlooked in the haste of preparing the newspaper 
communication. I believe, however, that they are all of a comparatively un- 
important character 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

THE NKW rOSlTION OF THE BUITISH MINISTKY — THAT THK AMERICAN PROC- 
LAMATION OF BLOCKADE OF THE CONFEDERATE PORTS NECESSITATED THE 
QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY — AN AFTERTHOUGHT, ... 1 

11. 

THE AMERICAN PROCLAMATION OF BLOCKADE NOT THE OCCASION OF THE RECOG- 
NITION OF CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY, BECAUSE, SUPPOSING THE FORMER TO 
HAVE BEEN OFFICIALLY COMMUNICATED, IT WAS NOT KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN 
ENFORCED AT THE DATE OF THE LATTER; AND FURTHERMORE, IF ENFORCED, 
WAS NOT SDCU AN ACT AS OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN INTERNATIONALLY TREATED 
AS AN ACT OF WAR, ... 22 

III. 

CORRECTION OF VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS OF HISTORICUS IN HIS ARTICLE OF 
MARCH 22d, AND INCIDENTAL NOTICE OF EARL RUSSELL'S DESPATCH TO LORD 
LYONS OF MARCH Grn, 1861, . , 30 

IV. 

I'HE RECOGNITION OF CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY NOT A BY-GONE, BUT A 
CONTINUING REALITY, 44 



APPENDIX. 

COMMUNICATION OF HISTORICUS TO THE LONDON TIMES OF MARCH 22d, 1865, 47 



HASTY EECOGnTIO:^[ 

OP 

REBEL BELLIGERENCY, 

AND 

OUR RIGHT TO COMPLAIN OF IT. 



I. 

THE NEW POSITION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY —THAT THE AMERICAN PROC- 
LAMATION OF BLOCKADE OF THE CONFEDERATE PORTS NECESSITATED THE 
QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY — AN AFTERTHOUGHT. 

It seems to be a settled thing that a serious demand is about 
being made by the United States upon England and France for the 
withdrawal or cancellation of their recognition of Confederate bel- 
ligerency. I do not propose now to discuss how that demand is 
likely to be received by the two great Western powers of Europe, 
nor what should be our attitude in case of a refusal. But in an- 
ticipation of any decision, which may be come to on the other side 
of the water, upon the first head, I desire to call attention to a 
noticeable change of position which Earl Russell and " Historicus," 
the well-known international-law correspondent of the London 
Times, have just assumed, at our latest intelligence from England, 
in regard to the basis on which that belligerent recognition orig- 
inally rested on the part of England ; a change of position which 
implies that Englishmen are unwilhng to stand by the justification 
then put forth, or that they are preparing themselves with a new 
plea to meet the anticipated demands to be made by us upon their 
government. 

Mr. Bright, in a recent masterly speech in the House of Com- 
mons on the question of the Canadian defences [Times, March 14th], 



4 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

had undertaken to tell the British representatives with bold frank- 
ness, that the reason why EngHshmen feared a feeling of hostility 
towards them on the part of the Americans was because they had a 
guilty conscience themselves, that they deserved the ill-will of the 
United States for having treated them so badly throughout their 
struggle for national existence. Mr, Bright was vehemently " no, 
no"-d for this by some of the members of the House ; but his speech 
manifestly made a profound sensation both inside and outside the 
parliamentary walls. The London Times forthwith launched a bit- 
ter diatribe against him in the shape of a communication of two col- 
umns and a half from Historicus, which I propose presently to no- 
tice, and which will be found at length in the Appendix, and in two 
or three editorials, following up his speech, has attempted to reply to 
its positions. Earl Russell felt compelled to notice it in the House 
of Lords ; and though he could not answer it formally, through that 
parliamentary rule which forbids allusion in one branch to words 
spoken in the other, he took occasion to protest emphatically against 
" speeches declaring that this country [England] has behaved 
wrongfully to the United States," as showing England's enemies 
" that there is a party [here at home] ready to take up the view 
that the United States are in the right," and then proceeded to 
make a detailed rejoinder to Mr. Bright's several heads of accusa- 
tion. In the course of this speech, made March 23d (London 
Times, March 24th), Earl Russell puts forth the following noticea- 
ble explanation of the original reasons for recognizing the Confed- 
erates as belligerents, which I undertake to assert is an entire 
change of base from that promulgated at the time to this country 
and to the world at large, and which was never heard of till 
months — certainly, till many weeks — after the war began, when 
the course of events and the judicial decisions this side of the 
water rendered it convenient for England to adopt a new justifica- 
tion for her hasty action in recognizing, and (so) befriending, the 
rebels. Says Earl Russell — 

" Every one wlio knows anything of the law of nations, knows perfectly 
well, that although a country may put down insurgents who rise against its 
authority, yet that a country has no right or power to interfere with neutral 
commerce unless it assumes the position of a belligerent. But that is what 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. o 

the United States did. The President of the United States by his proclama- 
tion declared that the coasts of particular States were in a state of blockade, 
and that armed vessels belonging to those States were to be treated as pirates 
At that time Lord Campbell held the high office of Lord Chancel- 
lor, and of course we consulted him and the law officers of the Crown as to 
what should be done. Lord Campbell declared, as we all supposed he would 
do, that there was no course but one to pursue, — namely, to regard the block- 
ade on the part of the United States as the exercise of a belligerent right. 
And as belligerent rights cannot be confined to one party, but are usually 
exercised against somebody else, our advisers told us that we were entitled to 
recognize the existence of belligerent rights on the part of both the com- 
batants and to declare Her Majesty's neutrality between the two parties. 
[Cheers.] " 

The Italics near the close of the extract are mine ;i and they 
naturally suggest an important diiference between doing what one 
is only " entitled " to do, and yielding to an urgency so pressing as 
that just before suggested in Lord Campbell's opinion, where " there 
is no course but one to pursue." I apprehend that Earl Russell 
only meant to assert that President Lincoln's proclamation of 
blockade entitled the British Government, not required it, to 
treat the two parties on a footing of equality. Historicus, in his 
sweeping dogmatism, had asserted two days before, in his communi- 
cation to the Times, that, — 

" It was a matter not of choice, but of necessity, that the Queen of Eng- 
land should issue a proclamation of neutrality to her subjects, and that that 
proclamation should be issued without one single instant's delay." 

He further denounces his contempt for Mr. Bright's knowledge 
of statesmanship by asserting that, — 

" Nothing has ever so much astonished him as to find that on either side of 
the Atlantic any man of ordinary intelligence and education should be capa- 
ble of advancing or entertaining for an instant such a complaint [as that] of 
the premature concession of belligerent rights to the South by Great Britain." 

Now, I propose to show my readers, — 

First. That this proposition of Earl Russell's and Historicus's, 

1 I desire to state that in subsequent extracts hereafter, I shall Italicize in the same 
manner, where I seek to give prominence to particular passages. 



t^ 



4 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

that the President's proclamation of blockade lay at the bottom of 
the recognition of the Confederates as belligerents, if not a new 
discovery, was never heard of at the time that that recognition was 
resolved upon ; certainly that it was never put forth as its justifying 
motive, either in contemporaneous explanation made to the United 
States or to the rest of the world : 

Second. That any such attempted justification will fail, for the 
reason that no blockade, ordered by the President, was known in 
England to have actually been enforced at the date of the Cabinet 
determination to issue the proclamation of neutrality ; and, had it 
been known at that date, was just the act which called for explana- 
tion from international good wiU and courtesy, rather than an act to 
be visited with the harsh and summary treatment of raising a band 
of insurrectionists to the level of equality with their rightful gov- 
ernment : 

Third. That Historicus is guilty of the grossest inaccuracies, not 
to say misstatements, in his attempt to convict Mr. Bright of trump- 
ing up a case for the Americans on the score of unjust complaints 
about premature recognition of Confederate belligerency. 

First. That Earl Russell and Historicus are getting up a new 
issue for the justification of English haste in recognizing the Con- 
federates as belligerents ; — the old one being that there was a state 
of flagrant war between two duly organized governments. 

The first element is the date on which the Cabinet determina- 
tion to issue the Queen's proclamation of neutrality was arrived at. 
This is important, because Historicus cites with a loud flourish of 
trumpets a despatch of Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, dated April 
22, 1861 and received in London May teiitli, 1861, — a despatch 
communicating the President's proclamation of blockade of April 
19, and Jeflerson Davis's proclamation threatening to issue let- 
ters of marque and reprisal, dated April 17, — and asks, in a tone 
of confident assurance, " what was the Immediate duty of a gov- 
ernment charged with the interest of British subjects all over the 
world, on the receipt of such a despatch ?" 

Now, unfortunately for the British Government's " duti/,''^ the 
Ministerial determination to raise the Confederates to the standing 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. O 

of belligerents had been announced four days before this despatch ■' 
(jot to England ! 

I find, in Hansard's "Parliamentary Debates " (v. 1G2, p. 1566), 
that Lord John Russell, the British Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, on the sixth day of May, in answer to questions put by Mr. 
Gregory, announced, in his place in Parliament, that the Cabinet 
having " consulted the law-officers of the Crown, — the Attorney- 
General, the Solicitor-General, and the Queen's Advocate, — the 
Government have come to the opinion that the Southern Confed- 
eracy of America, according to those principles which seem to 
them to be just principles, must be treated as a belligerent." 

Of course the London Times and other Confederate organs di- 
lated the next morning upon the importance of this Ministerial step. 
So that we have it fixed as an historical fact, to all posterity, that 
the authorized spokesman of the British Cabinet officially announced 
to the House of Commons, on the 6th day of May, 1861, that the ^ 
British Government had resolved to recognize the Confederates as a 
belligerent power. The Home Secretary, Sir George Cornwall 
Lewis, announced to the same body, on the 9th of the same May, 
that a proclamation of neutrality was about to be issued ; and the 
proclamation itself actually bears date the 13th. But of course the 
blow at the integrity of the American Government — or, at Amer- 
ican good will, shall I say ? — was levelled at the date of the 6th. 

So that if Historicus (following the Blue Book) correctly states 
the date of the reception at the Foreign Office of the official copy 
of the President's proclamation of blockade, on which official com- 
munication of the document only, as he seems properly to con- 
sider, were the British Government authorized to treat it as a 
valid State-paper, it follows — that the Queen'' s proclamation of oieu- 
trality could have had no connection ivith the American proclama- 
tion of blockade, inasmuch as the former preceded all official 
knowledge of the latter hy at least three entire days. 

How then could Lord Campbell or the law-advisers of the Crown 
have given any such advice as Earl Russell is now sure that they 
gave, or, as Historicus is ready dogmatically to prove, a piriori, that 
they could not help but have given ? 

But supposing that the telegraph or the newspapers had brought 



b HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

to the Foreign Office, at an earlier date than the 6th of May, the 
upshot and eifect of the blockade proclamation, or even what pur- 
ported to be a summary of its contents (of which I am free to 
confess that I make no question ; indeed, I purpose presently to 
quote a despatch of Earl Russell's to Lord Cowley of that date, 
distinctly assuming a knowledge of its existence), and supposing 
further, that the law-advisers of the Crown were willing to give 
their opinion upon the scope and bearing of the proclamation with- 
out having the official text before them (which I must confess I can 
hardly for a moment believe would either have been asked or ex- 
pected of them),^ let us see if Earl Russell's new theory is borne 
out by the other attending facts and probabilities belonging to the 
case. 

In the first place, I beg my readers to look at the contempora- 
neous explanation of motives accompanying the announcement of 
the determination of Her Majesty's Government to extend to the 
rebels the status of belligerents, put forth by Earl Russell himself. 

I have already quoted from Hansard a part of the Foreign Sec- 
retary's declaration on the 6th of May. I now go back and give a 
few sentences earlier, — 

" With respect to belligerent rights in the case of certain portions of a 
State being in insurrection, there was a precedent which seems applicable to 
this purpose, in the year 1825. The British Government at that time allowed 
the belligerent rights of the Provisional Government of Greece, and in conse- 
quence of that allowance the Turkish Government made a remonstrance. 
I may state the nature of that remonstrance and the reply of Mr. Canning. 
The Turkish Government complained that the British Government allowed 
to the Greeks a belligerent character, and observed that it appeared to forget 
that to subjects in rebellion no national character could properly belong. 
But the British Government informed Mr. Stratford Canning that the char- 
acter of belligerency was not so much a principle as a fact ; that a certain 
degree of force and consistency acquired by any mass of population engaged 
in war entitled that population to be treated as a belligerent, and, even if 



1 I believe that it will turn out on investigation that the Foreign Office at the date of 
the 6th of May, 1861, and until the receipt of Lord Lyons' despatch referred to, on the 
10th, had not even a correct or complete newspaper-copy of the blockade pi-oclama- 
tion before it, upon which to act or to solicit an opinion from the Crown lawyers. 
From what investigation I am able to give the subject, looking to two leading London 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 1 

their title were questionable, rendered it the interest well understood of all 
civilized nations so to treat them ; for what was the alternative ? A power 
or a community (call it which you will), which was at war with another and 
which covered the sea with its cruisers, must either be acknowledged as a 
belligerent or dealt with as a pirate ; which latter character as applied to 
the Greeks was loudly disclaimed." 

So that, according to this, while Earl Russell was likening the 
rebels to the struggling Greeks and the Federal Government to 
their Turkish oppressors, — undesignedly, perhaps, though it was 
bitterly complained of at the time by the upholders of the Union 
cause, — he was approving and acting upon Mr. Canning's dictum, 
that " belligerency is not so much a principle as a fact, and that a 
certain degree of force and consistency, acquired by any mass of 
population engaged in war, entitles that population to be treated as 
a belligerent." 

What is there here which reads like the President's proclamation 
not merely " entitling " but requiring the British Government to 
treat the declaration of blockade as tantamount to a declaration of 
war against the South ? On the contrary, is not the inference un- 
avoidable, that " the principles which seemed (to the law-advisers) 
to be the just principles " for recognizing a state of belligerency on 
the part of the South were those sanctioned by the high authority 
of Canning, and acted upon under his lead in the case of the 
Greeks versus the Turks ? 

journals and various American newspapers, I am led to believe that up to the 6th of 
May no other abstract or summary of the proclamation was known, on the other side of 
the Atlantic, than that contained in the telegraphic summary from Wasliington to the 
New York daily newspapers of April 20th, — commitnication being interrupted on that 
day between Washington and New York, and continuing so interrupted till the 27th, — 
which summary, instead of giving the text of the proclamation, recites as an item of 
news, " The President has issued a proclamation that an insurrection against the Gov- 
ernment of the United States," &c., giving all the body of the proclamation, except the 
last important sentence, which denounces the penalties of piracy against all who molest 
United States' vessels [under Jefferson Davis's commissions of marque and reprisal], 
but containing such interpolations as "the President says," &c. [See, for instance, the 
London Daily News of May 3d, which copies this summary without the preamble or 
any signature of the President or Secretary of State.] The National Intelligencer of 
April 20th, alone of American newspapers, I suspect, gave on that day what purported 
to be, and what actually was, the text of the proclamation. But this newspaper, I am 
, quite confident, did not find its way to England till it was carried out by the packet 
which bore Lord Lyons' oflicial copy of the President's proclamation, communicated 
to him from the State Department. 



<5 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

In the next place, I beg attention to the Queen's proclamation 
itself, as containing its own exposition of the motives which oc- 
casioned its issue. Herein I gladly follow Historicus, who chal- 
lenges Mr. Bright to go over the instrument with him, and see how 
harmlessly impartial and unnoticeably inefficient are its provisions. 
If it be true that Mr. Bright had never read or closely scanned 
these provisions, as Historicus presumes to believe, then I can only 
say that I venture to suggest that Mr. Bright has much better got 
at its scope by hearsay and on trust, than his critic, with all his 
refinements and improvements, who undertakes to say that it is 
based upon the American proclamation of blockade, and who, in a 
gross confounding together of the Enghsh and American proclama- 
tions (or something worse), interpolates into the latter an impor- 
tant paragraph belonging only to the former, and wholly perversive 
of its leading intent. 

Says the Queen's proclamation, then, in its recital clause, — 

" Whereas hostilities have unhapinly commeyiced between the 
government of the United States of America and certain States 
styling themselves the Confederate States of America," — not, 
whereas certain proclamations of blockade and of threat to issue 
letters of marque and reprisal have been published by President 
Lincoln and Mr. Jefferson Davis, — and [going on] "whereas 
we have declared our royal determination to maintain a strict and 
impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending par- 
ties," — not whereas we are compelled to define our position in 
the state of constructive warfare consequent upon the Federal 
manifesto, — [we therefore have thought fit] "to issue this our 
royal proclamation : and we do hereby strictly charge and com- 
mand all our loving subjects to observe a strictly neutrality in and 
during the aforesaid hostilities^ It then goes on to recite the 
terms of the Foreign Enlistment Act (which Historicus says is 
never operative except in case of war), and concludes with the 
denunciation and exposition of the specific acts of entering the 
military or marine service of either party, &c., which will be con- 
trary to Her Majesty's good pleasure, and will forfeit her coun- 
tenance and protection as against either belligerent. 

Thus summarized, is not this instrument as positive an assertion 



UASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

of Her Majesty's behest and injunction that her subjects shall not 
intermingle in a flagrant war that has actually broken out and is 
now raging between the two belligerent factions of the American 
republic, as words can frame ? At any rate, does it not fully nega- 
tive the notion that Her Majesty's advisers had only in mind a 
constructive and not an actual state of hostilities ? 

The only allusion to a blockade throughout the proclamation, is, 
if anything, a more offensive announcement to the American Gov- 
ernment, — who were sedulously insisting that the outbreak was 
only an insurrection, and to be smothered by a blockade without 
the use of force, — than the perverse assertion that there was 
already a state of flagrant war itself. It occurs toward the end of 
the document, where British subjects among other unneutral acts 
are forbidden to " break, or endeavor to break, any blockade, law- 
fully or actually established, by or on behalf of either of the said 
contending parties." To think of its being suggested to an Ameri- 
can, on the 6th day of May, 1861, that the Northern ports were 
blockaded or in danger of being blockaded by a rebel navy ! 

But let us look outside of the proclamation for further contem- 
poraneous explanation of its motives. The American minister, Mr. 
Adams, as Mr. Bright notices, had not yet reached England, 
though momentarily expected there, and though his arrival within 
a few days, or even hours, might almost be predicted with math- 
ematical certainty, as his sailing from Boston had already been 
announced. In fact, he landed at Liverpool the evening of the 
13th, and was probably met by the newsboys crying the proclama- 
tion as he drove up from the steamboat to his lodgings. He 
hastened to London the 14th, and as soon as possible after, 
allowing for a few days' delay occasioned by a domestic bereave- 
ment which had befallen Lord Russell, obtained an interview with 
the Foreign Secretary. 

The subject of the recognition of the Confederates as belligerents 
was, of course, one of the leading topics of this interview. Mr 
Adams has set down in his despatch to his government, dated May 
21, 1861, the full particulars of this (to him) most interesting com- 
mencement of his ministerial career. It will be found in the 
" President's Message and Accompanying Documents for 1862," 

2 



10 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

and there covers some six pages. Not one word of this dispatch, 
from beginning to end, speaks of recognition being rendered neces- 
sary bj the President's proclamation of blockade. On the contrary, 
the representation then made by Lord Russell is summed up in the 
following sentence (p. 92) , — 

" A necessity seemed to exist [as Lord Russell urged] to define the course 
of the government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great 
Britain in the impending conflict. Tlieir conclusion had been that, as a ques- 
^tion merely of fact, a war existed." 

Earl Russell himself furnishes a report of this same interview 
to Lord Lyons, to be found in the Parliamentary Blue Book for 
1862 (" N. America, No. 1," p. 3-1). His own version, thus af- 
forded, contains nothing at all at variance with Mr. Adams's 
account, but, on the contrary, fully corroborates it in important 
particulars. Thus, in a paragraph relating to full recognition of 
rebel independence, which Mr. "Adams seemed to feel apprehensive 
of as the next step. Earl Russell reports himself as using the fol- 
lowing language ; — quite upsetting any theory of a state of con- 
structive beUigerency : — 

" I said that we had taken no step except that of declaring ourselves 
neutral and allowing to the Southern States a belligerent character ; that the 
size and population of the seceding States were so considerahle that we could 
not deny them that character." 

Some allusion, to be sure, is made in both reports to the x\mer- 
ican blockade, but only to the point to inquire how complete the 
American government proposed to make it. 

Now I beg to ask, if it is within the bounds of possibility, that, 
if the proclamation of neutrality had been based . upon the Presi- 
dent's proclamation of blockade (as Earl Russell says it was, 
quoting the Lord Chancellor), no allusion should have been made 
to it by the Foreign Secretary in this interview ? Here was Mr. 
Adams, seeking an immediate interview and demanding with sup- 
pressed sensibility, if not with uncontrolled excitability, what was 
the meaning of this piece of unexpected and unwelcome conduct 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 11 

of England toward his government ? And here, on the other hand, 
was the Foreign Secretary, fresh from the Cabinet council and from 
contact with the Lord Chancellor and his legal associates, undertak- 
ing to explain the reasons of so grave and unfriendly a step on the 
part of his government, in the least offensive and yet most simple * 
manner. Is it in human nature, if he could have replied to Mr. 
Adams, — " It is all the fault of your President's proclamation ; 
it is an unavoidable necessity forced on us by him," — that he 
would not have surely done so ? 

It is very noticeable, in the same connection, that Earl Russell, 
when called upon to vindicate the issuing of the proclamation of 
neutrality on an emergency similar to that created by Mr. Adams's 
first official interview, and as late as September 25th, 1863, namely, 
in his Blairgowrie speech in reply to Mr. Sumner's address at the 
Cooper Institute in New York, September 10th, I860, omits all 
allusion to the proclamation of blockade as one of the justifying 
motives for the declaration of British neutrality. Mr. Sumner had 
insisted, with great vehemence and power, that the declaration of 
neutrality — or of " equality " between the National Government and 
" the Rebel slave-mongers," was not only " an insult to the Na- 
tional Government," but " a moral absurdity, offensive to reason and 
all those precedents which make the glory of the British name." 
And he had proceeded to charge upon it such bitter and momentous 
consequences, that one would suppose that no possible stimulant 
could have been wanting to induce the Foreign Secretary to re- 
vive all the justifications which memory could conjure up to palliate 
the measure of " investing " the rebels " with all the rights and pre- 
rogatives of a belligerent." What had Earl Russell to say in reply ? 

This was his justification, according to the report of his speech 
in the London Times of September 28 th : — 

" Our coui-se on the subject [of Neutrality] has been attacked and blamed 
in the bitterest terms, — blamed sometimes by the Federals and sometimes by 
the Confederates. The first offence was felt by the Federals. They said we 
had no right to grant, so far as we were concerned, to the Confederates the 
rights of belligerents. Well, now, gentlemen, that question of the rights of 
belligerents is a question of fact. I put it to you whether, with 5,000,000 peo- '^ 
pie — 5,000,000, 1 mean, of free men, declaring themselves in their several 



12 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

States collectively an independent State, — we could pass over that as a petty 
rebellion ? Our Admirals asked whether the ships they met bearing the 
Confederate flag should be treated as pirates or no. If we had treated them 
as pirates we should have been taking part in that contest. (Cheers.) It 
was impossible to look on the uprising of a community of five millions of peo- 
ple as a mere petty insurrection (Hear, hear), or as not having the rights 
which at all times are given to those Avho by their numbers and importance, 
or by the extent of territory they possess, are entitled to these rights. 
(Cheers). Well, it was said we ought not to have done that because they 
were a community of slaveholders, &c." 

So that at this juncture, again, there is no word about a block- 
ade ; but the old position of " a question of fact," and " a great 
community of rebel subjects." Truly, if Lord Campbell had sur- 
vived to hear his noble friend make this utterance, he must have 
wondered at the notice taken of his own (supposed ?) advice, that 
the proclamation of blockade had left but one course to pursue ! ^ 

But the case against Earl Russell, founded upon contempora- 
neous evidence furnished by himself, by no means stops with his 
speech in Parliament of the 6 th of May, announcing the govern- 
ment's decision, nor with the respective accounts of his first inter- 
view with Mr. Adams. Unfortunately for the Foreign Secretary, 
on the very day on which he announced in the House of Commons 
the Ministerial determination to recognize the rebels as belliger- 
ents, he indited two despatches, printed in the Parliamentary Blue 
Book for 1862, " North America, No. 3," in which he confiden- 
tially makes known to the English ambassadors at Paris and at 
"Washington the motives which actuated the Home Government in 
coming to their decision. In that to Lord Cowley (p. 1), he 
says, — 

" The accounts which have reached them from some of Her Majesty's 
consuls, coupled with what has appeared in the public prints, are sufficient 
to show that a civil war has hroTcen out among the States which lately com- 
/ posed the American Union. Other nations have therefore to consider the 

_ light in which with reference to that war they are to regard the confedei'acy 
into which the Southern States have united themselves ; and it appears to 
Her Majesty's government that, looking at all the circumstances of the case, 

1 I would notice, in passing, how defective must have been the Foreign Secretary's 
memory of dates on this occasion, in coupling despatches from the Enghsh Admirals 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 13 

tlicj cannot hesitate to admit that such confederacy is entitled to be consid- 
ered as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prtroga- 
tives of a belligerent." 

And, more pointedly still, in that to Lord Lyons, he writes (p. 
2), as follows, ^ — 

[LOKD J. RUSSELL TO LORD LYONS.] 

" Foreign Office, May 6, 1861. 

"My Lord, — Her Majesty's government are disappointed in not having 
received from you by the mail wliich has just arrived, any report of the state 
of affairs and of the prospects of the several parties, with reference to the 
issue of the struggle which appears unfortunately to have commenced be- 
tween them ; but the interruption of the communication between Washing- 
ton and ^ew York sufficiently explains the non-arrival of New York des- 
patches. 

" The account, however, which Her Majesty's consuls at different ports 
were enabled to forward by the packet coincide in showing that whatever 
may be the final result of what cannot now be designated otherwise than as- 
the civil war which hax broken out between the several States of the late 
Union, for the present at least those States have separated into distinct confed 
eracies, and as such are carrying on ivar against each other. 

" The question for neutral nations to consider is, ivhat is the character of 
the war ; and whether it should be regarded as a war carried on between 
parties severally in a position to wage war, and to claim the rights and to 
perform the obligations attaching to belligerents? 

" Her Majesty's government consider that that question can only be an- 
swered in the affirmative. If the government of the northern portion of the 
late Union possesses the advantages inherent in long-established governments, 
the government of the southern portion has nevertheless duly constitute / it- 
self and carries on in a regular form the administration of the civil govern- 
ment of the States of which it is composed. 

asking for instructions how to treat Confederate cruisers, with a period prior to May 
6th, when the Secretary himself had not yet received his ofBcial copy of the Presi- 
dent's proclamation, and when Lord Lyons in the despatch enclosing it, of the date of 
April 22d (the same, received May 10th, about which Historicus makes so great a de- 
monstration), only speaks of his (Lord Lyons') losing no time in communicating the 
proclamation to Admiral Milne. It is hard to see how Admiral Milne's answer to this 
communication could have got the stai-t of Lord Lyons' despatch, unless the Admiral 
happened to be ashore at Halifax, and then it would be at most a single Admiral, and 
not " Admirals," who had asked for instructions. 

1 I give this despatch entire, believing that it will constitute hereafter a memorable 
document in the history of the American civil struggle. See further comments on it 
hereafter, p. 40=-^^ r/ 



14 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

" Her Majesty's government, therefore, without assuming to pronounce 
upon the merits of the question on which the respective parties are at issue, 
can do no less than accept the facts presented to them. They deeply deplore 
the disruption of a confederacy with which they have at all times sought to 
cultivate the most friendly relations; they view with the greatest appre- 
hension and concern the misery and desolation in which that disruption 
threatens to involve the provinces now arrayed in arms against each other ; 
but they feel that they cannot question the right of the Southern States to claim 
to be recognized as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and 
prerogatives of a belligerent. 

'• I think it right to give your Lordship this timely notice of the view taken 
by Her Majesty's government of the present state of affairs in North Amer- 
ica, and Her Majesty's government do not wish you to make any mystery of 
that view. 

" I shall send your Lordship by an early opportunity such further infor- 
mation on these matters as may be required for your guidance ; at present 
I have only to add that no expression of regret that you may employ at the 
present disastrous state of affairs will too strongly declare the feelings with 
which Her Majesty's government contemplate all the evils which cannot fail 
to result from it. 

" I am, &c., 

"J. EUSSELL." 

These grave utterances have never before been reprinted in the 
United States, that I am aware of. The despatches from which 
they are taken well deserve the attention of the American reader 
as tending to shoiv (in judicial phraseology) — I will not go so 
far as to say as absolutely proving — that it was England, and not 
France, which took the initiative in recognizing the belligerency of 
the Confederates. As a matter of fact, England, as is well known, 
issued her proclamation of neutrality a month earlier than the 
French Emperor, his. But I would ask any reader, English or 
American, if there is anything here which sounds like " interfer- 
ing with neutral commerce " by an American blockade, as spoken 
of by Earl Russell in his late apology for the motives for recog- 
nition, or anything that sounds like the opinion quoted by him on 
the part of the Lord Chancellor, " that there was no course but 
one to pursue, namely, to regard the blockade on the part of the 
United States as the exercise of a belligerent right ? " On the 
contrary, is there not matter enough here to have disturbed the 
conscience of Lord Russell when he read such a sentence as that 
reported in Mr. Bright's speech, in the Times of March 14 ? — 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 15 

" Is there not a consciousness in your heart of hearts that you have not be- 
haved generously toward your neighbor ? [Loud cries of ' No ! ' and some 
cries of ' Hear, hear.'] Do we not feel in some way or other a reproving of 
conscience ! [Renewed cries of ' No ! ' ] And in ourselves arc we not sen- 
sible of this, that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular junc- 
ture V [' No, no ! ' ] " 

To put my readers for a moment in possession of the facts upon 
which the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs was making these 
utterances, namely, — that a flagrant subsisting war between the two 
" distinct confederacies of the late Union," and the constitution of 
the Southern confederacy into a duly organized form of government, 
were the grounds upon which Her Majesty's government " feel that 
they cannot question the right of the Southern States to claim to be 
recognized as a belligerent," — I would state that the assault upon 
Fort Sumter was made April 12, and that it surrendered two days 
after, the 14th. This was the first intimation that the government 
at Washington had that the insurrectionists were preparing to push 
matters so far as to take up arms. Then, as I believe, every 
American will bear me out in asserting, the general belief at the 
North was, that the act was only one of " State-right " hotheads, 
which the great body of Secessionists would repudiate immediately, 
and that the insurrection, if it called for the use of arms to sup- 
press it, would be entirely local in its character and easily subdued. 
At this time the Federal government had not a soldier in the field, 
nor had it taken the first step in arms toward avenging the gross 
insult ofiered to its flag. Lord Lyons, himself, writing to Earl 
Russell, under date of April 15 (received in London, April 30, 
Blue Book, No. 1, p. 19), speaks of the President's " only having 
resolved to adopt coercive measures against the South," not of 
having actually taken any steps in that direction down to the date 
of the 13th. Now there was just six days'* interval between the 
7'eceipt of this letter and the announcement in Parliament of the 
Cabinet determination to recognize the Confederates as belligerents 

Was it ever heard of before in history, that insurgents who were 
only known to have been in arms one week, and against whom it v^ 
was not yet certain that the present government would adopt any 
other coercion than that of an external blockade, or, perhaps, a " re- 



16 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

possessing itself of the forts, places, and property, which had been 
seized from the national authority," were to be recognized as bel- 
ligerents on the ground of a subsisting flagrant war, and that they 
had become a duly organized government ? 

But of course it will not be left out of view, that the irresistible 
and inevitable necessity which is alleged to have constrained the 
acknowledgment of Confederate belligerency, and so of Confeder- 
ate equality, must have arisen out of the rebels' ability to carry on 
Avar hy sea as well as by land ; since it was only on the sea that 
the steps taken to encounter and suppress their insurrectionary 
proceedings would touch upon the interests of England and France. 
Had the insurrection been purely inland, I suppose that it might 
have gone on for twenty years, and even assumed larger proportions 
than it did, without disturbing the equanimity of the two great 
Western powers. I believe the world have not yet heard that the 
great struggle of the Poles for independence within the last two or 
three years necessitated any recognition of Polish belligerency. 
Now, how was the fact in regard to the marine struggle between 
" the two distinct confederacies of the late Union," as Lord Rus- 
sell styles them on the 6th day of May, 1801 ? 

It will hardly be pretended, I suppose, that there was on that 
day any subsisting war on the ocean between the two confederacies, 
nor even, I believe, that there was a probability of any such war 
for some time to come, unless the Confederates could subsidize a 
show of naval force by hiring or buying vessels from abroad. 
But is England a convert to the doctrine of fighting naval wars by 
proxy ? Quite recently we have heard of the proposal of Switzer- 
land to buy or hire a seaport on the Mediterranean and hoist a nau- 
tical national flag. Is England so far prepared to accept the 
maxim in the commercial law of agency that qui facit per aliaiii 
facit per se, that she is ready to come into a European under- 
standing to acknowledge Switzerland as a naval power in case of 
future continental wars, supposing that she can carry out her pro- 
posed extra-territorial arrangement ? Does England recognize the 
right of her New Zealand rebels at the present moment to come to 
Europe or America and hire fighting ships to beat off her block- 
ade of their island ? 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 17 

However the decision of England may be on these points, Earl 
Russell and Historicus cannot alter the fact, that Ht the inception 
of the rebellion, the Confederates had no naval armament of their 
own, and had no reasonable expectation of ever procuring any one 
that could for a moment withstand the Union marine. Down to 
the present moment, can the operations of even such pseudo war- 
vessels as the Alabama and the Florida be said to have amounted 
to a state of organized belligerency against the North ? I will not 
ask whether those skulking corsairs have been able to maintain any 
show of contention on an equal footing, but whether they have been 
able to keep up anything which approached an existing state of 
organized warfare ? Has it not been buccaneering and marauding, 
on their part, even within Historicus's own admission, rather than 
a state of legitimate naval warfare ? 

But at the date of May 6th, 1861, Jefferson Davis, as Histor- 
icus urges, had threatened to issue letters of marque and reprisal, 
and the safety of British seamen and British commerce required 
his instantaneous recognition as a marine belhgerent. As if Captain 
Kidd should have laid claims to the honors of war, because he had 
thought to enlarge his field of usefulness by granting commissions 
to others to encourage them to imitate his own prowess ! Does 
Historicus say in earnest that England had anything to fear from 
Davis's privateers, either in assailing British ships of war, or in 
pillaging British merchantmen ? If he does, I can only pronounce 
it, in my estimation, a deception and a pretence. For Confederate 
cruisers to assail their good friends, the British, at that day of their 
embryo existence, is an absurdity too glaring to deserve a mo- 
ment's reflection. But, then, to see the remedy actually apphed ! 
There was danger of having unrecognized privateers visit and 
search British merchantmen ; and so, to guard against it, these 
privateers must needs be raised to the full rank of belligerents, and 
the whole fleet of British merchant ships enjoined by Her Majesty's 
proclamation to yield a passive submission to whatever overhaul- 
ing and turning upsidedown it might please Mr. Davis's em- 
ployes to inflict upon them ! An extraordinary mode of getting 
rid of an evil, that of swallowing it whole ! 

But to go a step farther in estimating British sincerity in pro- 

3 



18 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

tecting Britisli commerce from the aggressions of privateers. The 
United States,#6 is well known, at the very earliest outbreak of the 
rebellion, hastened to propose to the two Western European powers 
to come into the Declaration of Paris and abolish privateering, — 
the only point of resistance upon which the Federal Government 
had hitherto stood out. What was the English and French answer 
to the proposal ? " We will not accept your proposal without the 
reservation of the full rights of your insurgent subjects to commis- 
sion these privateers ; for, otherwise, we should not be treating 
them on a footing of equality with you." So that England and 
France purposely kept alive the prospect of privateering depreda- 
tions, and for the avowed object of enabling the rebels to carry on 
war to better advantage against their lawful government. I think 
very little of warding off a threatened commercial danger by 
such a process of purposely keeping it on foot and insisting upon 
its indefinite increase. 

But what danger had England and France to dread from aggres- 
sions on the part of Northern cruisers, if that bugbear is to consti- 
tute the constraining motive for recognition of belligerency at their 
hands ? I believe I can best answer this question by requesting 
my reader to put himself into the current of events at the date of 
the occurrence of the Trent affair, and to bring before his mind the 
condition of things connected with that event. That memorable 
historical incident occurred in November, 1861, some seven or 
eight months after the attack on Sumter. Recalling, then, the rel- 
ative attitude of the two countries, England and the United States, 
toward each other at that period, and remembering the sensation 
excited by that (probably) first act of visitation and search by an 
American war-ship of an English merchantman — a case, where, in 
the American view, Captain Wilkes fell short of his duty in not 
bringing in the Trent for adjudication, instead of letting her go 
again after a few hours' detention — can the reader believe for a 
moment that English commerce up to that point had experienced 
much annoyance from Northern cruisers, though the right of vis- 
itation and search on their part had then been in full force for up- 
ward of seven months ? 

If Historicus quotes the fable of the wolf and lamb to illustrate 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 19 

anj part of the relations subsisting between the two countries dur- 
ing the civil struggle, — an illustration which he thinks pertinent to 
this complaint about premature recognition, — I submit whether 
England, on this occasion of the Trent affair, should not justly take 
the part of the wolf, standing ready from the 6th day of May, 
1861, till the 3d day of December following, to snap up any 
American lamb that should happen to trouble the stream of her 
commercial navigation. At any rate, with her lamb-like redress of 
the Trent injury, as Historicus would probably call it, is it very 
probable that she had previously suffered from many antecedent 
aggressions upon her neutral rights by American public ships, or 
that if any such had really occurred, she had let them go by unno- 
ticed ? 

But since Earl Russell and Historicus challenge an inquiry into 
the friendhness of the motives which impelled this sudden stroke of 
British diplomacy in recognizing Confederate belligerency before 
there had been any speck of war on the sea and none on the land 
of more than six days' duration, by their new theory of protection 
to British maritime rights, I beg to call attention to another con- 
temporaneous exposition of the reasons of state Avhich probably 
prompted the measure, quite at variance with those now set up by 
them for the first time. 

A debate occurred in the House of Lords on the 16th of May, 
1861, three nights after the announcement of the proclamation of 
neutrality, and in which the inquiry was, what would be its effect 
upon privateering and upon Englishmen who should take part on 
the Confederate side. The declarations made by the leading peers 
upon this head were so significant and decisive, that I desire to 
urge them upon the attention of any who are disposed to conclude 
that English recognition of Confederate belligerency was a neces- 
sity and not a choice. 

Says Lord Derby, who struck the key-note of the measure 
[I quote from Hansard, v. 162, p. 2082, &c.,], — 

" The Northern States must not be allowed to entertain the opinion that 
they are at liberty so to strain the law as to convert privateering into piracy 
and visit it with death. The punishment under such circumstances of per- 



^/ 



20 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

sons entitled to Her Majesty's protection -would not be viewed with indiffer- 
ence, but would receive the most serious consideration by this country." 

Lord Chelmsford (Ex-Lord Chancellor) was still more explicit, — 

" He should wish to know from his noble and learned friend [Lord 
Brougham] whether he meant to contend, that if an English ship were commis- 
sioned by those States (the Confederate) and fitted out as a privateer against 
the Federal Government, her crew would under such circumstances be guilty 
of piracy ? . . . . British subjects so engaged would no doubt be answerable 
to the laws of their own country ibr an infraction of the foreign enlistment 
act ; but it was perfectly clear, on principles of international law, that they 

would not be liable to be treated as pirates -(/? be might add, the 

Soutliern Confederacy had not been recognized hy us as a heUigerent poicer, he 
agreed with his noble and leai-ned friend that any Englishman aiding them by 
^fitting out a privateer against the Federal Government toould be guilty of 
piracy" 

So, Lord Chancellor Campbell, the very authority quoted by 
Earl Russell for the declaration of neutrality being based on Presi- 
dent Lincoln's proclamation of blockade, expressed himself with 
equal explicitness and significance, — 

" If, after the publishing of the present proclaination, any English subject 

were to enter the service of either of the belligerents, there could 

be no doubt, that although he would be guilty of a breach of the laws of his 
own country, he ought not to be regarded as a pirate for acting under a com- 
mission from a State, admitted to be entitled to the exercise of belligerent 
rights and carrying on which might be called z, justum bellum. Anybody deal- 
ng with a man under these circumstances as a pirate and putting him to 
death, would, he contended, be guilty of murder." 

Certainly the Lord Chancellor does not speak here as if the pro- 
tection of British commerce required an immediate manifesto to the 
American Government, warning them against interfering with Brit- 
ish merchant ships and British neutral rights, but, on the contrary, 
the protection sought for seems to be that of Confederate pri- 
vateersmen, whom Lord Derby would not allow to be hung, and 
the protection of British shipbuilders and British sailors from the 
penalties of piracy, to which both the Lord Chancellor and the 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 21 

Ex-Lord Chancellor say they would have been liable, but for this 
measure of British foresight and British self-aggrandizement. 

On this evidence, I submit to my readers, with entire confidence, 
whether it is not an after-thought on Earl Russell's and Histori- 
cus's part, in contending at this late day that there was no unfriend- 
liness on the part of the British Government in hastening to recog- 
nize the Confederates as belligerents, but that they were con- 
strained to do so in consequence of the establishment of the Amer- 
ican blockade. I ask, rather, whether these two propositions are 
not so far made to appear, — 

(1.) That England hastened to raise the Confederates to the 
status of a belligerent power under the pretence of an existing 
state of war, when as yet only an insurrectionary blow had been 
struck at Fort Sumter, and no more than one week was known to 
have elapsed within which the American Government could decide 
whether the insurrection would need suppression by arms, and when 
as yet that government had not put the first soldier into the field 
nor fired the first gun toward such a suppression ; 

(2.) That the motive for recognition of Southern beUigerency 
was much more to throw protection over Confederate privateers and 
their crews, and to aid the rebel cause with contributions of Eng- 
lish volunteers and English naval armaments and equipments, than 
to guard English commerce from being harassed or interfered with 
by American cruisers. 



22 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 



II. 

THE AMERICAN PROCLAMATION OF BLOCKADE NOT THE OCCASION OF THE RECOG- 
NITION OF CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY, BECAUSE, SUPPOSING THE FORMER TO 
HAVE BEEN OFFICIALLY COMMUNICATED, IT WAS NOT KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN 
ENFORCED AT THE DATE OF THE LATTER ; AND FURTHERMORE, IF ENFORCED, 
WAS NOT SUCH AN ACT AS OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN INTERNATIONALLY TREATED 
AS AN ACT OF WAR. 

I HAVE to say, on this second head, that no such justification can 
be set up for the recognition of Confederate belhgerency as that of 
the estabhshment of the American blockade, because no such block- 
ade was known in England to have been established at that date ; 
and because the proclamation for a prospective blockade was just 
such an act as called for explanation from international comity, be- 
fore being treated with the harsh, construction that raised a band of 
insurrectionists to the level of equality with their rightful govern- 
ment. 

Dates are of importance, again, on this head. President Lincoln 
issued two proclamations of blockade, the first, dated April 19th, 
and announcing an intention to blockade the ports of seven States 
— South Carohna, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisi- 
ana and Texas ; and the second, dated April 27th, including in ad- 
dition to the above, the two States of Virginia and North Carolina 
which had since given in their adhesion to the rebellion. Both 
these proclamations, I now submit, were only prospective in their 
nature, and on their face intended merely for measures for the sup- 
pression of domestic insurrection, but (more importantly for present 
purposes) were never actually enforced till the 30^/i day of April. 

This last point is established on British authority, by evidence of 
British consuls resident in America, collected in the Blue Books 
for 1862 (" North America, No. 8 "). The earliest blockade w: s 
that established at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay by Commodore 
Prendergast, April 80th. Other points were blockaded at the fol- 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 23 

lowing dates : — Charleston, May 13th ; Mobile, May 27th ; 
New Orleans, May 28th, &c. 

If further corroboration were wanted of the fact that the earliest 
date at which the American blockade took effect was April 30th, it 
will be found in the decision of the United States Supreme Court 
in " the Prize Cases " reported in 2d Black's Reports, p. 635, 
where the precise question of this date arose, involving captures of 
many hundreds of thousands of dollars in value. So that we may 
proceed in this discussion with the accepted starting-point, that no 
American blockade took effect till April 30th, 1861 ; and that then 
there was the further grace of fifteen days for outward-bound ves- 
sels, and of being warned off for the first time for inward-bound 
vessels, ignorant of the establishment of the blockade. 

Now it needs no great amount of calculation to demonstrate, that 
an event occurring at sea on the American coast, April 30th, and 
so not known on shore till some time later, could not have been 
known in England so soon as May 6th. The submarine telegraph 
had long before ceased to operate, and we may safely assume that 
Commodore Prendergast's operations were not known in England at 
that date, nor even as early as May 13th. The determination to 
issue the proclamation of neutrality, I conclude, then, with perfect 
confidence, did not rest upon any knowledge of the American 
blockade being actually in force. 

I next submit, that the President's proclamation of April 19th 
(and there is no difference in this respect with regard to the procla- 
mation of the 27th) is merely prospective in its nature, — declara- 
tory of an intent to establish a blockade in future, — and that it 
purports to be a mere municipal or domestic measure for the collec- 
tion of revenue and the restoration of domestic good order. 

That it was merely prospective in its nature and declaratory of a 
future intent is judicially settled by the Federal Supreme Court in 
the case just quoted from the 2d of Black's Reports. Both por- 
tions of the bench, the majority who gave the decision of the court, 
and the dissenting minority, harmonize in opinions on this point. 
If it were worth while, I would stop to cite strong dicta by both 
sets of judges to corroborate this statement ; but I deem it quite 
unnecessary, because I find that Earl Russell took the same view 



24 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

of it in the despatch which he wrote to Lord Cowley, the British 
ambassador at Paris, May 6th, ah-eady quoted. In that despatch 
(p. 1) he says : " President Lincoln, in behalf of the northern 
portion of the late United States, has issued a proclamation declar- 
atory of an intention to subject the ports of the southern portion of 
the late Union to a rigorous blockade," &c. 

So that on the very day of resolving to declare neutrality in the 
existing American war, Earl Russell was well aware that the Amer- 
ican proclamation was only prospective. The same thing was well 
understood by Lord Lyons on the other side of the water, who 
writing home to the Foreign Secretary as late as May 4th, reports 
to him that Mr. Seward had written to say " that the proclamation 
is mere notice of an intention to carry the blockade into effect, and 
the existence of the blockade will be made known in proper form 
by the blockading vessels." 

Having thus established that the blockade was merely a prospec- 
tive measure, and so understood at the time, I would ask if Earl 
Russell, or Historicus, or any other pubHcist, is prepared to assert 
that a threat to establish a blockade — even against an independent 
nation, much more against insurrectionary subjects — is a sufficient 
justification for proclaiming a state of war and recognizing the 
blockaded party as belligerents ? Why ! the very ground-work of 
fact assumed in Lord Campbell's reasoning for such an opinion (as 
reported by Lord Russell) has not yet come into existence : — 
There cannot be " any interference with neutral commerce," till a 
neutral ship is stopped, or searched, or seized, neither of which acts 
is allowable till a blockade is established by the power issuing its 
manifesto of a future intent to that effect. Even the (so-called) 
belligerent's prize court would not pretend to condemn captures of 
war till the blockade was thus actually enforced. Let the reader 
just reflect upon the point of controversy in the prize cases just 
quoted, where the Federal court only condemned for a violation of 
blockade committed fifteen days after the 30th of April, and where 
the contention turned upon the date of the establishment of this 
blockade, and he will see at once the justice of my position. 

To give the point a popular test, let me ask, whether if the coun- 
ty of Cork, in Ireland, for instance, were in a state of insurrection 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 25 

against the British Crown, and the home government for reasons of 
convenience should elect to suppress the rising by a marine instead 
of a military force, would it be thought a just cause for the recog- 
nition of the insurgents as a beUigerent power, for the Cabinet to 
announce its intention to blockade the port of Cork within a given 
time ? Why ! the very Declaration of Paris of 1856 announces 
that such pronunciamentos are null and void, and not to be re- 
spected till made effectual ; and would Earl Russell now con- 
tend that he has a right to treat them as casus belli, and thereupon 
proclaim neutrality ? On the contrary, in this very despatch to 
Lord Cowley, of May 6th, last referred to, Earl Russell makes it a 
special part of his application to the French Government, to seek 
to compel the United States to come into one of the terms of that 
declaration — that relating to the abolition of privateering ; it being 
well understood that they had already adopted in effect the clause 
in regard to constructive blockades. 

But will a hhcksbde, actualli/ enforced, — especially against in- 
surrectionary subjects, — necessarily draw after it the consequences 
of belligerency ? This is a question which I believe that neither an 
English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs nor a French Minister 
of Foreign Affairs would be very ready to answer in the affirmative. 
Thus, to put again the case just supposed, of the blockade of the 
port of Cork or Queenstown : Suppose, that, instead of a promulgated 
intention to blockade, there were a blockade actually enforced, for 
some reason of its not being convenient to march troops through the 
interior of the country ; would England take it in good part, if 
the United States should acknowledge the belligerency of Queens- 
town and hasten to proffer to that town the aid of their sailors and 
their workshops ? 

Would France relish the doctrine that a blockade of revolted 
provinces necessarily creates a state of belligerency ? She has 
actually and strictly blockaded the coast of Mexico for two years, 
prior to the treaty of 1839, without its being called a state of war. 
England and France jointly blockaded the ports of the Argentine 
Republic for ten years, following 1838, and captures of contraband 
violators of the blockade were released on the ground that the 
blockade itself was not inconsistent with peace ; and so of other 



26 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

instances noticed by Hautefeuille (in his chapter on Pacific Block- 
ade), who I am willing to agree with Historicus, indulges in many 
doubtful theories of international law, but who doubtless is correct 
in the statement of these historical events which I have cited, 
especially as they make against the doctrine which he is seeking to 
establish. Russia, again, blockaded and dosed the ports of her 
Circassian rebels on the east shore of the Black Sea for upwards of 
five years succeeding the year 1831 ; and, what is more, England, 
under the lead of Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary, acqui- 
esced in the blockade and surrendered the claims of her sid>jects 
loho suffered loss from itJ Indeed,! believe that I might safely as- 
sert that the diplomatic experience of Earl Russell would furnish him 
with at least twenty instances of established blockades, within his 
own personal cognizance, which have never been treated as belliger- 
ent acts. If that be so, or anything like it, then one may ask with 
weighty remonstrance, how happened it, that the Cabinet to which 
he belonged seized upon this American denouncement of peaceful 
and commercial coercion toward its insurgent subjects as a ground 
for straightway raising them to the dignity of a belligerent power ? 

But this naturally leads me to the latter branch of my topic, that 
if the American proclamation of blockade were at all doubtful as a 
measure of interference with neutral rights, it was just the case for 
explanation, and not for being seized hold of as a pretext to do an 
international injury. 

Is there any doubt that the President's proclamation of blockade 
meant peace, and not " war," as Historicus alleges ? 

I take occasion here to correct a gross misstatement, on this 
head, by the writer just named. He says that the Queen's procla- 
mation of neutrality, like that of President Lincoln's of blockade, 
shows an existing state of war on the American side of the water. 
After quoting the recital of the first, " Whereas hostilities have un- 
happily commenced between the government of the United States 
of America and certain States," Historicus proceeds to character- 
ize it as " a statement precisely in accordance with the proclama- 
tion of President Lincoln, which had issued those words previously. ^^ 

1 See the case of the ship Vixen, 2G British and For. State Papers, p. 2. In this in- 
stance the Russian Government, to be sure, did not use the term blockade, but the Brit- 
ish merchant found the substance of the thing in it, to his cost. 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 27 

. Now there could not be a grosser inaccuracy, not to say perver- 
sion of the truth, than this. So far from President Lincoln's proc- 
lamation, acknowledging the existence of a state of war, it was just 
the object of this state-paper not to do it. On the contrary, the 
American proclamation begins, " Whereas an insurrection against 
the government of the United States has broken out " (in the seven 
States named) " and the laws of the United States for the collec- 
tion of revenue cannot be effectually executed," &c., and " whereas 
a combination of persons engaged in such insurrection have threat- 
ened to grant pretended letters of marque," and " whereas an 
executive proclamation has already been issued requiring the per- 
sons engaged in those disorderly pi-oceedings to desist therefrom," 
" now, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, with a 
view to the purposes before mentioned and to the protection of the 
public peace,^'' &c., " have further deemed it advisable to set on 
foot a blockade," &c. 

Not a word about " hostilities," from beginning to end ; but on 
the contrary, a blockade for the " collection of revenue," necessi- 
tated by " an insurrection," and designed for " the protection of 
the public peace." 

Where were the eyes or the candor of Historicus, when he read 
that document and characterized it as he does ? Even the edito- 
rials of the journal, to which he lends the sanction of his name, 
could hardly be guilty of a worse perversion ; and I talce the liber- 
ty of adding, that I fear his own communication throughout, in the 
present instance, has suffered from that corruption of good manners 
which is so sure to follow bad companionship. 

What was precisely the American Government's scheme of in- 
stituting the blockade, I cannot undertake to state. But that it 
was essentially a plan for smothering the Slaveholders' rising, in- 
tended for domestic coercion and repression, and not for interfer- 
ence with foreign nations or for aggression upon their commerce, 
must, I think, be conceded by every impartial inquirer into the 
facts of that day. I cannot doubt, but, that, if the British and 
French Governments had only signified in a friendly way to the 
American Government, that certain modifications of the rights of 
search on the high seas were necessary to prevent the blockade be- 
ing considered of an international and not a municipal character. 



28 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

such modifications would have been cheerfully submitted to, with- 
out the insult and aggravation of being told that their government 
had already gone to pieces and that their rebel subjects were as 
good a belligerent power as themselves. 

On the other hand, is it to be wondered at, that — after the in- 
calculable lift given to the Slaveholders' rebellion by this European 
action of recognition, and more especially after the significant virtual 
announcement by the two great Western powers, that they cared 
more for procuring cotton than for the integrity of the American 
Union, and that they meant to leave the door open for blockade- 
running, at all events, — the United States should accept, and feel 
constrained to act upon, a theory of blockade as imperfect as that 
left to it by the cooperation of British Lairds and British joint- 
stock, blockade-running associations ? 

I call attention, though, to the fact, that the decision of the 
United States Supreme Court, affirming the enforcement of the 
blockade to amount to a recognition of Southern belligerency on 
the part of the United States for certain purposes, was made long 
after the action of the two great Western powers had compelled 
that government to accommodate its blockade to external dictation, 
and that, certainly, the change of this blockade from a municipal 
into an internationally-conducted proceeding would never have been 
necessitated but for the hasty and unfriendly recognition of South- 
ern belligerency. 

If I am asked more particularly how this would have been 
brought about, if the proclamations of neutrality by England and 
France had never been issued, I answer that, if, in the first place, 
the continuance of any American blockade would have been ren- 
dered necessary but for this European interference, I believe that 
it would have been the intention of the American Government not 
to exercise belUgerent rights on the high seas as to foreign nations, 
— say the right of search and capture in case of carrying con- 
traband of war, — but that they would have contented themselves 
with a close blockade of the mouths of the Southern harbors by 
stationary squadrons, and would only have dealt with violators 
of that blockade who came close to hand ; just as in a besieged in- 
land city, beleagured on all sides, the right of suppressing internal 
insurrection would carry with it the right of treating any person 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 29 

violating the beleaguerment as an enemy. Certainly, if the same 
principle of respecting a lawfully-established blockade had been ob- 
served by the English as has been practised on by the French dur- 
ing the late rebellion, there would have been no difficulty in the 
United States' Government making good their intended domestic 
repression as against all external invasion. 

I believe that I may safely conclude what I have to say upon 
this point of the American right to have foreign powers duly re- 
spect their blockade, established for revenue and disciplinary pur- 
poses, by putting to English and French statesmen the question, — 
Are you prepared to accept and to agree hereafter yourselves to 
abide by the precedent which your governments have set in this 
American civil war, of refusing to acknowledge any blockade 
established for the repression of domestic insurrection, except upon 
the footing of insurgent equality and of free license to blockade- 
running, except so far as is interfered with by the lax restraints of 
general maxims of international duty ? If you are not, then you 
will agree with me, that even if the American blockade had been 
actually enforced at the date of the 6th of May, 1861, and even 
though that blockade had infringed upon the rights of foreign com- 
merce in some degree, a fair share of international comity toward 
a nation engaged in the suppression of a groundless revolt, — orig- 
inating in the most immoral motives of any rebellion on record, — 
would have kept off the recognition of its rebellious subjects as a 
.belligerent power longer than was practised toward the United 
States in the present struggle. 



30 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 



III. 



CORRECTION OF VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS OF HISTORICUS IN HIS ARTICLE OF 
MARCH 22d, AND INCIDENTAL NOTICE OF EARL RUSSELL'S DESPATCH TO LORD 
LYONS OF MARCH 6th, 1861. 

I PROCEED briefly to notice some additional misstatements or 
perversions of fact of Historicus's, besides those which I have al- 
ready attempted to set right. It is perhaps quite unnecessary to 
do this, at the side of the more general discussion in which I have 
engaged ; but as I shall limit myself to those bearing upon the 
main points of contention, and as this Avriter enjoys (I take pleasure 
in saying, most deservedly, in many respects) a large share of 
English confidence for his elucidation of international topics, I 
trust that the reader who has thus far followed my disquisition, will 
not find his patience abused by being asked to judge of the fair- 
ness of my strictures upon these detached though affiliated matters. 

Historicus says (inter alia) that the proclamation of neutrality 
conferred no rights upon the Confederates ; it only recognized an 
existing state of things. In his precise words, — 

" It is nothing more nor less than a domestic document affecting the posi- 
tion of the Queen's subjects alone, and not in any way interfering with the 
affaii's of other nations." 

But did not Lord Russell regard it as something more, when he 
was communicating to the French Government through Lord Cow- 
ley, with solemn diplomatic earnestness, as I have already quoted, 
that, — 

" Her Majesty's Government cannot hesitate to admit that such Confed- 
eracy is entitled to be considered a belligerent, and, as such, invested toith all 
the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent." 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 31 

Who " invested " them with those rights and prerogatives, I 
would ask, but England and France ? When Lord Chelmsford 
says, that, after the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as a 
belligerent power, no British subject aiding them in rebellion would 
be liable to be treated as a pirate, and that such a subject who un- 
dertook to fit out a privateer against the Federal Government, but 
for that recognition, would be guilty of piracy, is there no " con- 
ferring " of a right or privilege upon the rebels ? When Lord 
Derby says that the Northern States must be given to understand 
that they cannot turn privateering into piracy, and that if British 
subjects participate in the latter, they will still be treated as under 
Her Majesty's protection, is it not " in some way interfering with 
the affairs of other nations ? " And, finally, when the Lord Chan- 
cellor sums up the climax, by stating the law to be, that if any 
such British aider and abettor of the rebellion were treated as a 
pirate, the persons so deahng with him would be guilty of murder, 
does it not strike the common mind that the creation of such a 
state of things carries with it aid and comfort of an important 
kind? 

And this leads me to notice another gross blunder (or something 
worse) on the part of Historicus, which the authority of the Law 
Lords just quoted effectually disposes of. He says, — 

" If no such war [recognized by the declaration of neutrality] existed, 
tlien the shipbuilders might equip, arm, and despatch, vessels of war equally to 
New York and to Charleston. English subjects might enhst and take service 
in the forces of either party." 

And again, — 

" If there had been no war, Mr. Laird might have equipped for the South 
500 Alabamas without interference. This is what the North have gained." 

Per contra^ Lord Chelmsford, — 

" If, he might add, the Southern Confederacy had not been recognized by 
us as a belligerent power, he agreed with his noble and learned friend 
(Brougham) that any Englishman aiding them by fitting out a privateer 
against the Federal Government would be guilty of piracy." 



32 . HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

I have just above quoted the Lord Chancellor to the same eflfect. 
Lord Kingsdown followed in the same strain. Lideed, so strong 
ran the debate in the " Lords," in the direction of throwing Brit- 
ish protection over aiding and abetting the Confederate cause, that 
Lord Ellenborough at the close of the discussion had to deprecate 
what he thought would be the effect of the speeches made by the 
peers in counteracting the tenor and effect of the Queen's procla- 
mation, by assuring Englishmen that if they adopted the notions of 
the speakers and took part in the war, they might find themselves 
hung, upon American principles, long before diplomacy could come 
to their relief. Perhaps these declarations of a Lord Chancellor 
and two ex-chancellors, to say nothing of the other legal lumina- 
ries alluded to, or who took part in the debate, will induce Histori- 
cus to abate somewhat from the dash of his assertion about fitting 
out Alabamas for the South with impunity. Perhaps, instead of 
asserting hereafter that Mr. Laird might have equipped " five hun- 
dred " " without interference," but for the Queen's proclamation, 
he will agree with Lord Chelmsford, that he could not have fitted 
out one Avithout being guilty of piracy, unless for the shelter of that 
state document ; and that will be enough for all practical purposes. 

Enlarging upon the notions of free commerce and free fighting, 
Historicus goes on to say, that, even the United States themselves 
did not treat the Confederate privateers as pirates. And he quotes 
the case of the trial of the crew of the Savannah for piracy in New 
York, in 1861 (not 1862, as he erroneously has it), where a Con- 
federate vessel had been captured at an early day of the rebellion 
by the Federal navy, and her crew carried into that city and tried 
for piracy. He says, — 

" The judge charged the jury that the ship could not be regarded as a pi- 
rate under the law of nations. And the government could not get a jury to 
convict, on the municipal statute. The arguments are published at length in 
a report of the trial, for a copy of which I am indebted to the eminent law- 
yer, Mr. Evarts, who represented the United States Government on that oc- 
casion We have the authority of the American judges in this very 

conflict, that by the law of nations a Southern privateer could not be treated 
as a pirate when exercising force against us." 

In rei^ly to this, I can only say that I wish Historicus had read 



HASTY RECOGNITION OP BELLIGERENCY. 33 

the report of the trial so kindly sent him by Mr. Evarts, before 
making this representation, or rather /nz'srepresentation of Amer- 
ican law. I have the report referred to, before me, at this writ- 
ing, and I read from the learned judge's charge to the jury, at 
p. 371, as follows, — 

" The robbery charfjed in this case is that which the act of Congress pre- 
scribes as a crime, and may be denominated a statute offence, as contradMn- 
guished from that known to the law of nations." 

Thus, according to Judge Nelson, the crew of the Savannah were 
not tried at all for an offence under the law of nations ; and the 
learned judge had no occasion to pass upon the question whether 
they were not protected from the penalties of piracy by being un- 
der the shelter of international law as legitimate belUgerents. On 
the contrary, a little farther on than where I have quoted, after 
explaining the statute (an old one of 1820, denominating " rob- 
bery," &c.,on the high seas, " piracy "), he goes on to say, — 

" Now, if you are satisfied, upon the evidence, that the prisoners have been 
guilty of this statute oftence of a robbery upon the high seas, it is your duty 
to convict them, though it may fall short of the offence as known to the law of 
nations." 

The learned judge took especial pains not to take it upon him- 
self to decide that the North had made the South belligerents 
under the law of nations, as Historicus would apparently have his 
readers believe, and expressly left the case to the jury upon the 
statute offence. That they did not convict was probably rather due 
to the judge's black-letter notion that the robbery must have been 
committed liicri causa, as in land robbery, than to any dictum of 
his about international law. 

If Historicus would like to have the whole truth told (supposing 
his acquaintance with American transactions has not yet put him 
in possession of it), would he be glad to be informed that some of 
the Confederate privateersmen tvere convicted of piracy in Phila- 
delphia, about the same time and under precisely the same condi- 
tion of things as the crew tried in New York ; and that his au- 
thority. Judge Nelson, has since expressly held in banco, at Wash- 



34 HASTY RECOGNITION OP BELLIGERENCY. 

ington, that there did not exist any state of belUgerency between 
the North and the South till July 13th, 1861 ? If so, I Avould 
refer him to all the journals of the day, for the first fact ; and, for 
the second, to the following brief extract from Judge Nelson's 
opinion in " the Prize Cases," 2d of Black's U. S. Reports, already 
referred to. In this opinion Chief Justice Taney and Judges 
Catron and Clifford concurred with Judge Nelson. The whole 
case, it may be remarked in passing, which does not perhaps yet 
decisively adjudicate the great question of when and how far the 
Federal Government have made the Confederates belligerents for 
all purposes, was decided by a bare majority of one judge. There 
is not a word in it about piracy. Says Mr. Justice Nelson, in giv- 
ing the opinion of the minority of the court, at page 698, — 

" Upon the whole, after the most careful examination of this case which 
the pressure of other duties has admitted, I am compelled to the conclusion 
that no civil war existed hettoeen this Government and the States in insurrec- 
tion, till recognized by the act of Congress, of the 13th of July, 1861." 

Is not this rather a damper, from his American voucher, for that 
notion of Historicus's, that the British Government ought to have 
proclaimed neutrality and recognition of belligerency at the earliest 
possible moment after the issue of the President's blockade mani- 
festo, say on the very same day, the 19th of April, 1861, if it had 
been possible to know of it by the Atlantic telegraph being then in 
operation ? 

Again Historicus says, — 

" The North created belligerent rights in both parties by making war upon 
the South." 

Perhaps most of his readers will accept this statement as in- 
tended for literal fact. If so, a grosser misrepresentation could not 
be made. The attack on Fort Sumter — the most ungallant and un- 
righteous challenge to combat that ever roused a free people to the 
defence of its government — must be understood, even by the 
shortest-memoried Englishmen, as a Confederate and not a Union 
stroke of war. I am willing to concede that Historicus might not 
have intended to turn this great fact in the world's history wrong 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 35 

side out ; but, without this correction, I fear that very many of his 
literal-minded readers would understand it otherwise ; and I submit 
that he is therefore reprehensible for something worse than mere 
hterary carelessness. 

Another of the Times's publicist's misstatements, bearing upon 
the main issue which I have all along been discussing, is, that even 
Mr. Adams, the American Minister, Avhen he arrived in England, 
felt no sense of grievance at the hasty action of the English Gov- 
ernment in issuing the proclamation of neutrality and recognizing 
Confederate belligerency, because he both ought to have been, and 
therefore doubtless was, prepared for it. 

Historicus attempts to shape it as if the grievance lay in the want 
of proper personal consideration for the American Minister, in not 
waiting for his expected arrival. But Mr. Adams, I venture to as- 
sume, felt the wrong, if it were such, on his country's account, not 
his own. It was the Minister of the United States who ought to 
have been waited for, not Mr. Adams. Now, will Historicus dare 
assert that the American Minister, as a matter of fact, was not 
both surprised and aggrieved hj the haste with which the Queen's 
proclamation was got out, in anticipation of his reaching Liver- 
pool ? If this is his intimation, let us see if it is not a most un- 
founded one. 

I have already quoted a part of Mr. Adams's first impressions 
of English action and opinion in his despatch to his government, 
giving an account of his first interview with the British Foreign 
Secretary. I quoted the despatch, it will be recollected, apropos 
of Lord Russell's explanation of the motives of the Queen's proc- 
lamation. I now recur again to the same document to see whether 
the American Minister had any complaint to make at that time in 
regard to the circumstances under which the British Government 
precipitated beUigerent recognition. 

I quote from the diplomatic correspondence accompanying the 
President's message, etc., for 1862, p. 92, — 

[I told Earl Russell in this interview of May 18] " that I must be permit- 
ted to express the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the 
Queen's proclamation which at once raised the insurgents to a level of a bel- 
ligerent State, and still more the language used in regard to it by Her Maj- 



36 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

esty's INIinisters in both houses of Parliament, before and since. ... [I said 
further] I must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed 
at least to my mind a little more rapid than -n-as absolutely called for by the 

occasion It did seem to me therefore as if a little more time might 

have been taken to form a more complete estimate of the relative force of the 
contending parties, and of the probabilities ot any long-drawn issue. And I 
did not doubt that the view taken by me would be that substantially taken both 
by the government and the people of the United States. They would inev- 
itably infer the existence of an intention more or less marked to extend the 

struggle I said this with regret, as my own feelings had been and 

were of the most friendly nature." 

Nearly a month later, in a despatch to his government dated 
June 14th, Mr. Adams gives an account of a further discussion of 
Y the same subject, -when the first excitement of surprise might be 
supposed to have somewhat worn oiF, — 

" I next approached the most delicate portion of my task. I descanted 
upon the irritation produced in America by the Queen's proclamation, upon 
the construction almost universally given to it, as designed to aid the insur- 
gents by raising them to the rank of a belligerent State I ventured 

to repeat my regret that the proclamation had been so hastily issued, and ad- 
verted to the fact that it seemed contrary to the agreement, said to have been 
projjosed by Wr. Dallas and concurred in by his lordship, to postpone all ac- 
tion until I should arrive possessed with all the views of the new administra- 
tion Our objection to this act (the proclamation) was that it was 

practically not an act of neutrality. It had depressed the spirits of the 
friends of the government. It had raised the courage of the insurgents. 
We construed it as adverse because we could not see the necessity of such 
immediate haste. These people were not a navigating people. They had 
not a ship on the ocean, &c." 

The diplomatic correspondence of the American Minister with 
his government at this period is full of language like the above on 
the part of Mr. Adams. How, in view of it (and of course he 
has at some time read it), Historicus can assert,, that Mr. Adams 
neither felt aggrieved nor had a right to feel aggrieved at the haste 
with which the British Government acted, — how he can still more 
dogmatically assert, as he does at the earlier point of his article 
already noticed, " that nothing has ever so much astonished him as 
to find that on either side of the Atlantic any man of ordinary in- 
telligence and education should be capable of advancing or enter- 



HASTY EECOGNITION OF EELLIGERENCY. 37 

taining for an instant such a complaint as that of the premature 
concession of beUigerent rights to the South by Gi-eat Britain " — 
is to me not less a matter of mystery than of regret. 

Mr. Adams is certainly a person of " ordinary intelligence and' 
education," even by Historicus's own showing. Does not he com- 
plain of it ? And has he not continued to complain of it — earnest- 
ly and persistently — down to the present moment of his official 
connection with the British Government ? Has not Historicus, him- 
self, devoted a long forensic of three columns of the Times, as re- 
cently ago as last December, to proving that President Lincoln and 
his advisers. Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, were in the 
wrong in adhering to this error — " querulous complaint " he 
called it — for three years and upwards, because the Artigas pre- 
cedent of the American Government made against it ? Have these 
eminent persons — [alas! that the great and good President, who 
so amply filled out the perfect character of a Christian ruler in 
" loving mercy, dealing justly, and walking humbly before his 
God," is no longer with us to be quoted as a living authority, and 
that our sagacious, patriotic, and peace-seeking Secretary of State 
will perhaps have been maimed for future usefulness by the assas- 
sin's knife ! ^] — have the survivors of these eminent persons, neither 
education nor intelhgence to entitle them to a moment's mention ? 

I need not refer to other Americans, official or unofficial, who 
have shared and still continue to share in this " querulous com- 
plaint ; " for if Historicus has never taken note of the acknowl- 
edged mouth-pieces of the American Government, its President, 
its Secretary of State, and its Minister to England, neither will he 
listen though I should produce the whole American people in testi- 
mony against him. 

My only mystery is, how any one, even a correspondent of the 
London Times of three years' standing, should have the hardi- 
hood to throw out such bold and unwarranted misstatements as the 
above, supposing the object even to be the annihilation of an oppo- 
nent as odious as Mr. Bright. My regret is, that one whose influ- 

1 Since the publication of this last allusion, though not until within two days past, it 
will have rejoiced my American readers to see Mr. Secretary Seward's name again at- 
tached to American State-papers. 



38 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

ence with Englishmen has hitherto been so deservedly potent in 
many particulars, should run the risk of having it so largely im- 
paired for the future by having any one examine and verify the 
reckless assertions and the unfounded reasoning which make up 
the staple of this late communication. 

The last observation which I shall have to make upon Histor- 
icus's paper relates rather to its general tone and the strain with 
which he rounds its swelhng peroration, than to any distinct asser- 
tion of fact or enunciation of a proposition of law. It seems worth 
while to notice this tone or strain, because several eminent Eng- 
lishmen who have taken a prominent part of late in Parliamentary 
discussions upon American affairs, and particularly the Attorney 
General, Sir Roundell Palmer, whom Historicus on the present occa- 
sion seems to be imitating, have fallen into a habit of wondering at 
American " irritation " when things are said or done which are 
(erroneously) alleged by the speaker to be said or done after 
American fashion, and then attempting to soothe the so-called irri- 
tation by applying to it what may be called an American blister. 
Thus the Attorney General wonders at our irritation at the English 
Government's following American precedents of neutrality, he all 
the while misquoting or misapplying those precedents and assuming 
a better acquaintance with them than he is willing to allow to the 
Americans themselves. 

On the present occasion Historicus is attempting to soothe our 
" irritation " at the hasty recognition of Rebel belligerency — a 
matter w^hich, considering how hardly it has pressed upon us in 
vital particulars for the last four years, I think the world must give 
us credit for having borne with at least tolerable equanimity — 
with the following international blister. 

Says Historicus, — 

" I am too well aware of the unhappy irritation which exists on the subject 
[of recognition of the Rebels] in the public mind of America not to desire to 
olTer the smallest contribution towards its removal." ... " Unhappily, there 
are too many persons on "both sides of the Atlantic who indulge themselves in 
the wicked and dangerous amusement of inflaming passions which they ought 
to soothe." .... " My ambition is of quite another sort. I desire by a re- 
course to those fixed and ascertained principles of law and maxims of justice 
which are enshrined in the records of nations and the conscience of mankind 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 39 

as tlie perpetual arbiters of truth and of peace, to remonstrate against an un- 
reasonable anger and an unjust animosity. Surely, sir, these evil tongues, 
which are like a sharp sword, may rest sated with the blood which they have 
helped to [make V] How. Sat prata hlberunt." 

All of which I venture to call the quintessence of cant ; only 
equalled by Lord Russell's declaring to his envoy at the American 
seat of government, Lord Lyons, on the Gth day of May, 1861, 
how deeply he deplored the disruption of the American Republic, 
and that " no expression of regret you may employ at the present 
deplorable state of affairs will too strongly declare the feelings with 
which Her Majesty's Government contemplate all the evils which 
cannot fail to result from it ; " and yet leading off to the world (the 
tidings of the attack on Sumter being then less than ten days old) 
with the announcement that " the late Union" " has separated into 
distinct confederacies," and, " the government of the Southern por- 
tion (having) duly constituted itself," Her Majesty's Government 
" feel that they cannot question the right of the Southern States to 
claim to be recognized as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all 
the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent " — and " ITer 3Iaje8ty''s 
Crovernjiient do not wish you to make any mystery of that [tliis^ 
view!^^ That is, " the civil war," as he calls it, having so far 
lasted ten days, he instructs his envoy " to make no mystery " of 
telling the government to ivhich he is accredited, that its supremacy 
has gone to pieces, and that he shall henceforth consider himself 
minister plenipotentiary to ^^ the late Union!" 

Great affection, that, for the ally " with whom Her Majesty's 
Government have at all times sought to cultivate the most friendly 
relations ! " And quite of a piece with that friendly declaration 
made by the same organ of Her Majesty's Government in the 
House of Lords, as lately as April 29th, 1864, when he said, " for 
my part, I have never been able to feel much sympathy with either 
of the contending republics, the United States or the Confederate 
States ! " — very much in the sense in which the affectionate wife 
looked on to see her husband grappling with the bear, coolly re- 
marking that she did not care a straw which beat. 

But Historicus feels bound to denounce those who make " an 
a}iiusement " of saying irritating things, and desires to enter his 



40 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

protest against " an unreasonable anger." If he had felt bound to 
denounce those who make a business of saying irritating things, 
one would think that he must have hit hard at his great political 
exemplar and leader, the Foreign Secretary. At any rate, one 
would think that it would be hard to find a better illustration of 
irritating, either on principle, or else for amusement, than is fur- 
nished by this letter of Earl Russell to the British Envoy at Wash- 
ington of May 6th, Of course, as Historicus would have us 
believe, the Foreign Secretary could not have meant to say any- 
thing irritating by that little piece of diplomatic effrontery and un- 
friendUness ! Of course, it would have been a very " unreasonable 
anger " on the part of the American President and Secretary of 
State to have felt anything like resentment at a communication so 
full of ungenerous discouragement — not to say ill-timed imperti- 
nence — as that ! 

But leaving Earl Russell's insincere diplomacy in this connection 
to speak for itself (and I do not doubt that by this time, regarding 
the present stage of our struggle, he is ready to admit that this 
despatch of the 6th of May was a hasty and ill-advised communi- 
cation on his part), I pass on to notice the affected formalism, or — 
as I must call it — cant of his newspaper champion and expositor, 

Historicus plants himself, then, upon those immutable principles 
of justice and maxims of law " which are enshrined in the records 
of nations and the conscience of mankind," and he abhors the evil 
example of slanderous tongues which help on bloodshed. 

Now, if I understand the sum and substance of the learned pub- 
licist's late communication to the Times, wherein occurs this piece 
of bold and swelling rhetoric, its upshot may be reduced to these 
two propositions : 

(1.) That no person on either side of the Atlantic of ordinary 
intelligence or education has ever for an instant advanced or en- 
tertained a complaint on this score of the hasty recognition of rebel 
belligerency by England, and — 

(2.) That if ever any ignorant or half-educated American has 
been so foohsh as to make such a complaint heretofore, or is so be- 
nighted as to propose to make it hereafter, then that he is advised 
to consider himself estopped and annihilated by this new discovery 
of the blockade theory. 



HASTY RECOGNITION OP BELLIGERENCY. 41 

As to the first of these propositions — if it is altogether untrue 
in fact (notoriously and flagrantly untrue, even within Historicus's 
own knowledge), as I have endeavored to suggest, rather than to 
take the trouble of attempting to jyrove at length, — is it worth 
while to talk about soothing irritation, and affect the Christian vir- 
tue of peace-loving, when the soothing process consists in an at- 
tempt to force a lie down the American throat, and then to palm 
off upon the British public the notion that the American throat has 
swallowed it ? 

As to the second of these propositions, I hope that I have shown 
that Earl Russell himself, the highest and best authority, never 
thought it worth while, even down to September, 1863, to put forth 
the blockade theory of recognition as that upon which lie acted. 

But leaving Earl Russell aside, for the present matter in hand, I 
believe it has been made to appear that this new invention of a 
blockade as the causa causans of belligerent recognition will not 
work, first, because as a inatter of fact it had not been officially com- 
municated to the British Government that any American blockade 
had been notified — certainly not actually enforced — • at the date 
of that government's decision to proclain neutrality ; and, second- 
ly, because, as a matter of law, a manifesto of a proposed blockade 
is not such an interference with neutral commerce as can be taken 
hold of even by tmfriendly powers, as a groundwork for their 
proclamation of a state of belligerency. 

Is it with reference to this latter point — the legal effect of a 
blockade manifesto against insurrectionary subjects — that Histori- 
cus feels called upon to evoke against certain unnamed controver- 
sialists (" irritabile genus "), the immutable principles of law and 
the eternal maxims of justice ? If it is so, I should be glad to have 
him produce the first glimmering of a maxim, or the first element 
of a principle, — whether juridical, or diplomatic, or in whatever 
"record" "enshrined," — controverting and subverting the view 
above contended for, that a blockade must be enforced, in order 
to become a belligerent act, justifying outside neutral powers in in- 
terfering between the parent government and its insurgent citizens. 
Even going the length of an enforced blockade, but enforced 
against a rebellious i^rovince or district, I have yet to find the case 



42 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

in public law, parallel to our own civil struggle, where neutral 
governments took it upon themselves, without waiting for an official 
notification of the terms of the blockade, to treat such a blockade 
as tantamount to a declaration of war and thereupon proclaimed 
belligerency and belligerent equality ? Can Historicus produce 
any such ? 

Is it not pure cant, then, for a juridical writer to treat a case of 
such new impression — even in the aspect of it sought to be en- 
forced by the Times's champion of British neutrality — as one 
" enshrined in the records of nations," and calling for the denun- 
ciations due to stirrers-up of strife and thirsters for blood against 
those who venture to question the necessity or the fairness of the 
British state-proceeding ? 

Bather than be in such haste to close up the flood-gates of strife 
— in bucolic allusion — and from the philanthropic motive of aim- 
ing only at international peace and good-will, as Historicus so de- 
monstratively professes, I would respectfully suggest to that eminent 
publicist, whether it would not have better comported with those 
professions, and have better served to soothe that American irrita- 
tion which he so unnecessarily deprecates, if he had stated some 
one of the ten following propositions, which make up the ground- 
work of his discourse, more according to the fact than he has done. 
When he has made the just corrections upon these heads due to 
fair discussion, I can assure him that he will be better listened to 
on this side of the water upon the theme of cherishing a forgiving 
and a forgetting disposition. These are the propositions which I 
submit to his notice : — 

1. That no man of ordinary intelligence or education on either 
side of the Atlantic has been or is now capable of entertaining for 
an instant a complaint against England for the premature recog- 
nition of Bebel belligerency. 

2. That it was not a matter of choice, but of necessity, that the 
Queen should issue her proclamation of neutrality and without an 
instant's delay. 

3. That a despatch received the 10th day of May, 1861, was 
the groundwork of action that took place on the 6th. 

4. That if the proclamation of neutrality had never been issued, 



HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 43 

British ship-builders might have equipped vessels of war equally 
for Charleston or New York; and Mr. Laird might have fitted 
out five hundred Alabamas for the South without interference. 

5. That President Lincoln's proclamation, like that of the Queen, 
recited that " hostilities had unhappily commenced." 

6. That the Queen's proclamation was a domestic document, af- 
fecting the position of the Queen's subjects alone, and not in any 
way interfering with the affairs of other nations. 

7. That the crew of the Savannah were prosecuted for piracy 
under the law of nations, but that Judge Nelson charged the jury 
that the accusation would not hold ; and that the American 
judges [have held] in this very conflict that by the law of nations 
a Southern privateer could not be treated as a pirate when exer- 
cising force against us. 

8. That the North created beUigerent rights in both parties by 
making war upon the South. 

9. That Mr. Adams neither felt aggrieved nor ought to have felt 
aggrieved at the issuing of the Queen's proclamation on the morn- 
ing of his arrrival. 

10. That it is a principle enshrined in the records of nations, 
that when a government proclaims a prospective blockade against 
rebellious subjects, other nations are not only entitled but required 
to declare those rebellious subjects belligerents, entitled to all the 
rights and privileges thereto pertaining, though those subjects are 
only known to have taken up arms on land less than ten days ago, 
and though they have not as yet the first ship or sailor afloat on the 
sea, and have no reasonable hope of making any demonstration 
amounting to organized marine warfare for months to come, unless 
by the aid of other (so-called) neutral powers. 



44 HASTY KECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 



IV. 

THE RECOGNITION OP CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY NOT A BY-GONE, BUT A 
CONTINUING REALITY. 

I HAVE thus, as I hope, fairly met and disposed of the new case 
set up by Earl Russell and promoted bj his champion of the 
Times with such an extraordinary course of advocacy as the 
above. But it may be asked of the writer, why take such pains, 
yourself, to answer a point so far in the background of the past ? 
Is it not a by-gone which may as well be let alone ? 

To this I have two answers : — 

(1.) That if the matter is of consequence enough to be resusci- 
tated by as veteran a statesman and as practised a dij;lomatist, as 
Earl Russell, — to say nothing about his calling upon the London 
Times and its juridical contributor to furnish him with a platform 
Avhence to put forth his parliamentary dogma to the world, — it is 
of consequence enough for some American to follow on in the dis- 
cussion and see that the truth is kept in sight : 

(2.) That this point of premature recognition is not a by-gone, 
but a question of to-day, in the sense of its being the initiative of a 
policy which England has adhered to for the past four years, and 
which at this moment, so far as we know, she still persists in, namely, 
of treating our rebellious, government-defying, slave-clutching and 
world- contemning Seditionists, as forming as respectable a govern- 
ment as the inheritors of the American Constitution and the right- 
ful representatives of the labors and principles of Washington. 

Does any one say of this latter point, that it is nothing to have put 
us on a level with slave-holding anarchists four years ago, be- 
cause the policy has been persisted in down to the present hour ? — 
I ask if that disposes of the question whether the motive of those 
who thus at the outset of the rebellion inaugurated a policy which 



HASTY RECOGNITION OP BELLIGERENCY. 45 

they fuUj knew would lift the insurgents into the rank of a bellig- 
erent power, " with all the rights and prerogatives thereto per- 
taining," was friendly or otherwise ; or, whether, as is now con- 
tended, there was an overruling necessity which deprived them of 
all volition in the matter and left them " no course but one to pur- 
sue." On the contrary, if that policy was unfriendly and unneces- 
sary then, is it not likely to have been persisted in since, from the 
same unfriendly and unjustifiable motives ? 

But I have a more important reason to urge to my objector. 
Who are those among our statesmen best calculated to* estimate 
the grave significance and practical moment of this measure of 
rebel-recognition, but those who have had the responsibility of 
suppressing the rebellion thrown upon them froni the outset ? — 
those who stood in the breach when recognition was fiirst promul- 
gated, and who to this hour have been watching day by day its 
efiect and bearing upon the shifting scenes of the contest ? — And 
what opinion have these official guardians of the public interest 
upon the bearing of that policy which was proclaimed in the British 
House of Commons on the 6th day of May, 1861 ? What opinion 
did the late President, do our present Secretary of State, our for- 
eign ministers, — especially Mr. Adams, who has stood in the hard- 
est spot of the diplomatic battle — the members of the Congres- 
sional Committee on Foreign Relations, and particularly its accom- 
phshed Chairman on the part of the Senate, — what opinion, I ask, 
do all these representatives of the republic hold upon this question 
of premature recognition ? If they all agree, as I believe I am war- 
ranted in saying they do, that the question was (and therefore still 
is') one of the very most important with which they have had to deal, 
then I believe no labor is misplaced which tries to uphold and pro- 
mote the just merits of a difierent policy which they insist ought to 
have been adopted at the outset of our struggle, and which must be 
reinstated in our favor at the first moment when we shall be in 
a condition to enforce our just rights of national respect. 

What England calls neutrality, is, I submit, as if a ruffian should 
knock my hat ofi" in the street, and when I undertake to repossess 
myself of it, a blustering bystander should step up and say, " Fair 
play, gentlemen ; this is a fair fight ; you are Ijoth equals ; it makes 



46 HASTY RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENCY. 

no difference to whom the hat belongs ; I mean to see one treated 
as well as the other ; I know no ruffian nor hat-owner in such a 
case as this ; perfect neutrality consists in treating you both per- 
fectly alike ; and I mean to act in that magnanimous spirit till I see 
who gets the hat upon his head. Then, finis coi'onat opus ; and I 
shall take off my own hat to the victor." 

Shame, I say, upon such so-called neutrality ! Shame upon the 
policy which set up Jefferson Davis for as rightful a belligerent as 
Abraham Lincoln, and which to the end of the chapter has insisted 
upon extending to the former as much of the rightful consideration 
due from the civilized world in that character as has been paid in 
that behalf to the latter. If there is no difference between them — 
if there ivas no appreciable difference between them — which should 
have prevented that " investing the former with all the rights and 
privileges belonging to a belligerent," spoken of by Earl Russell 
at the outset of the rebellion, then my essay is quite superfluous ; 
I concede that the recognition of Rebel belligerency is quite a by- 
gone matter, and that the Foreign Secretary has taken unnecessary 
pains to vindicate his government. 



APPENDIX 



< «»» > 



COMMUNICATION OF HISTORICUS TO THE LONDON TIMES OF MARCH 22d, 1865. 

THE NEUTRALITY OF ENGLAND. 

To the Editor of the Times : 

Sir, — When Mr. Bright undertakes to draw up a bill of indict- 
ment against England we may rest assured that nothing will be 
omitted which may put his own country in the wrong in the eyes 
of mankind. Accordingly his speech on Monday last is a com- 
plete repertory of the grievances against Great Britain, which are 
the stock in trade of some American journalists and of some Ameri- 
can politicians. 

It would have been surprising in this encyclopaedia of the 
wrongs of America, if Mr. Bright had omitted to advance the com- 
plaint of the " premature concession of belligerent rights " to the 
South by Great Britain. 1 confess that nothing has ever so much 
astonished me as to find that on either side of the Atlantic any 
man of ordinary intelligence and education should be capable of 
advancing or entertaining for an instant such a complaint. Mr. 
Bright is pleased to say, with lofty scorn at the conclusion of his 
tirade on this topic, " I will not argue this question further, as to 
do so would be simply to depreciate the intellect of the honorable 
gentlemen listening to me." I quite concur with Mr. Bright that 
the question is one which hardly admits of argument, but exactly 
in the opposite sense to that in which he comprehends it. While 
you have permitted me to endeavor to elucidate some of the more 
obscure and difficult questions of international dispute to which this 
unhappy contest has given rise, I have never yet thought it worth 
while to expound at any length the futility of a complaint which 
ought to be self-evident to any man who understands the very first 

(47) 



48-, -r/' APPENDIX. 

elements either of law or of politics. However, when such stuff 
as this can be gravely advanced by a person of Mr, Bright's im- 
portance in the presence of the English Parliament, a demonstra- 
tion of the full absurdity of this grievance may be useful, if not 
necessary. 

I must, therefore, ask the pardon of your readers while I pro- 
ceed to explain why, on the breaking out of the civil war between 
the Northern and the Southern States of America, it was a matter 
not of choice but of necessity that the Queen of England should 
issue a proclamation of neutrality to her subjects, and that that 
proclamation should be issued without one single instant's delay. 

Let us look at the situation of affairs at the moment when the 
proclamation of neutrality was issued by the Queen, on the 13th 
of May, 1861. The material documents necessary to the under- 
standing of this matter will be found in a paper presented to Par- 
liament in 1862 (entitled " North America, No. 1 "). At page 
23 (No. 31) will be found a letter of Lord Lyons to Lord J. Rus- 
sell, dated Washington, April 22, 1861, and received May 10, 
1861. That letter is to the following effect, — 



" I have the honor to inclose copies of a proclamation of the President of 
the Southern Confederacy, inviting application for letters of marque, and 
also a proclamation of the President of the United States, declaring that 
Southern privateers will be treated as pirates, and announcing a blockade of 
the Southern ports. 

" I lost no time in talcing measures to covnnunicate the contents of these proc- 
lamations as fast as possible, both h)j telegraph and post, to Rear Admiral Sir 
Alexander Milne. The subsequent interruption of communication with the 
North has prevented my learning how far my measures were successful. I 
understand that some alarm is felt in the North respecting the Southern pri- 
vateers. But it must be supposed that the navy, of the United States will 
suffice to arrest their operations. If these privateers, however, make any 
head in the Gulf of Mexico, it may, perhaps, be advisable that a British 
squadron should be sent there to insure the safety of British merchant 
vessels." 

Now, let any man of common sense consider what was the im- 
mediate duty of a government charged with the interests of British 
subjects all over the world on the receipt of such a despatch. On 
the one hand, the Northern Government had declared a blockade 



APPENDIX. 49 

of the Southern ports ; that is to say, it had assumed to itself a 
right as against neutral commerce which could only be justified by 
the existence of a state of legitimate warfare. The date of the 
proclamation of blockade was April 19, 1861. In virtue of this 
proclamation, the Northern Government, by the law of nations, 
became entitled to search English merchant vessels in every part 
of the high seas, to divert them from their original destination, 
and to confiscate the vessels and their cargoes. If a state of legiti- 
mate war did not exist, such action on the part of the Northern 
Government would have been unlawful, and would have been a just 
cause of war on the part of England, against whom such a course 
would in such case have 1)een pursued without justification. The 
proclamation of blockade of the 19th of April was therefore cither 
a declaration of war against the South, or it was a cause of war 
on the part of all neutral nations against whom it should be put in 
force. From that dilemma there is no escape. So far, as regards 
the position of the Northern Government as brought to the notice 
of the English Cabinet on May 10, 1861. 

Now let us see what was our situation with respect to the South- 
ern States. The proclamation of Mr. Jefferson Davis, authorizing 
the issue of letters of marque, was dated April 17, 1861. The 
English Government were consequently advertised that the high 
seas were about to be covered by armed vessels, who, under the 
color of a commission, claimed to exercise against neutrals the 
rights of warfare — that is, claimed to stop, and to search English 
merchant vessels, to capture them, and to carry them into their 
ports for adjudication, and to condemn them in case they had on 
board contraband of Avar. Nor was this all. If legitimate war 
existed, the penalties of the Foreign Enlistment Act came into 
operation. If no such war existed, then the shipbuilders might 
equip, arm, and despatch vessels of war equally to New York and 
to Charleston. English subjects might enlist and take service in 
the forces of either party. Mr. Bright aspires to the part of the 
champion of the mercantile interests of Great Britain. I would 
venture to ask him whether it was compatible with the duty of the 
Eno-lish Government to leave them for a single instant in doubt as 
to their real situation in respect to the condition of things which 
7 



50 APPENDIX. 

had arisen in America ? Was an English merchantman, sailing 
peaceably in pursuance of his ordinary- trade, to be left in igno- 
rance whether an armed vessel which overhauled and captured 
him was regarded by his own government in the light of a pirate 
committing a robbery on the high seas, or whether it was a lawful 
belligerent exercising the recognized rights of war ? What was to 
be the position of the English navy, who are posted in every corner 
of the habitable globe, to protect, by their presence, and if neces- 
sary to vindicate by their arms, the security of our mercantile 
marine ? Were they or were they not to be informed whether 
they were to " sink, burn and destroy" as pirates or to respect as 
lawful belligerents the cruisers of either party who exercised 
against our merchantmen those acts of force which the rights of 
war alone could justify ? No wonder that Lord Lyons thought it 
necessary to strain every nerve to give Sir A. Milne the earliest 
intelligence of the state of affairs. I am in the judgment of 
every man, whether he be in England or in America, who deserves 
the name of a statesman or of a jurist, whether the English Gov- 
ernment, which, after the receipt of the despatch of Lord Lyons, 
should have interposed an instant's unnecessary delay in declaring 
to the subjects of the Queen their rights and their liabilities arising 
out of the conflict in Amei-ica, would not have been guilty of the 
most grave dereliction of the duty which they owe to the Crown 
and to the country ? 

The English Government knew their duty, and they did it. 
Accordingly, on the 13th of May, 1861, the Queen's proclamation 
was issued. If there is anything to be regretted, it is only that 
the forms necessary for publishing such a document should have 
made a delay of three days necessary, otherwise it ought to have 
been issued the very day that Lord Lyon's despatch was received ; 
and if the Atlantic telegraph had been complete it should have 
been issued on April 19, the day on which President Lincoln's 
proclamation of blockade was put forth. 

Now, what was the purport of the Queen's proclamation of May 
13, 1861 ? I will venture to say that Mr. Bright has never read 
it, or if he has, he has certainly not understood it. The Queen's 
proclamation was neither more nor less than a warning to her sub- 



APPENDIX. 61 

jects that a state of things had arisen which seriously affected their 
interests, and which altered their existing rights and their liabilities, 
and directed them how to act thereupon. It began by stating, 
" Whereas we are happily at peace with all Sovereigns, States, 
and Powers." It then proceeded, " Whereas hostilities have un- 
happily commenced between the Government of the United States 
of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate 
States of America ; " a statement precisely in accordance with the 
proclamation of President Lincoln, which had issued these words 
previously, and which assumed the belligerent right of blockade. 
It goes on, " Whereas we being at peace with the Government of 
the United States, have declared our royal determination to main- 
tain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the 
said contending parties." Then it recites the foreign enlistment 
act, which is only operative in the event of hostilities existing 
abroad, and warns the subjects of the realm to observe its prohibi- 
tions and avoid its penalties ; and it concludes by advertising the 
Queen's subjects that if they engage in breaking a blockade estab- 
lished by either party, or by carrying contraband to either party, 
they will be abandoned to the penal consequences imposed by the 
law of nations, and will forfeit all right to the protection of the 
crown. 

Such is the purport of the Queen's proclamation. It will be 
seen that in its nature it is nothing more nor less than a domestic 
document affecting the position of the Queen's subjects alone, and 
not in any way interfering with the affairs of other nations. It is 
of the highest importance clearly to understand the true character 
of this document. In loose and inaccurate parlance we hear it 
said that in the proclamation of neutrality the Queen's Govern- 
ment conferred upon or conceded to the Confederate States bellig- 
erent rights. It did nothing at all of the sort. The Confederate 
States had belligerent rights by the mere fact of being at war. 
They acquired these rights immediately that a state of hostilities 
arose by the North going to war with them ; or their going to war 
with the North. Their title to belligerent rights was derived, not 
from the concession of any foreign power, but from the established 
code of the law of nations. We did not confer upon, or concede 



I 



52 APPENDIX. 

to, them the right to go to war. Thej went to war of their own 
will and pleasure, and from the moment they did so the enjoyment 
of belligerent rights accrued to them as a matter of course. They 
were rights which we had neither the power to confer nor to with- 
hold. We had no option or election in the matter at all. All that 
the proclamation of neutrality did was to inform the subjects of the 
Queen what were the consequences to them of a condition of 
things over which the English Government had no sort of control. 

To make this perfectly clear, let us just consider what would 
have been the state of things if the English Government had not 
issued the proclamation of neutrality. The state of hostilities in 
America would have existed just the same ; either party would 
have claimed and exercised the rights of war against the other and 
against neutral governments none the less. The North would 
have searched our vessels, enforced the blockade, and captured 
contraband. The Southern cruisers would have done the same. 
Their rights in these respects were not created by the Queen's 
proclamation, and would not have been lessened by its absence. 
What were we then to do ? Were we to hide our heads in the 
sand, like the ostrich, and not recognize a state of things which 
existed, and Avould continue to exist, whether we recognized it or 
not? 

Suppose the proclamation of neutrality not to have issued, what 
would have been the consequence ? A Confederate cruiser cap- 
tures an English merchant vessel laden with arms destined for New 
York ; in what light is the cruiser to be regarded, and how is she 
to be treated by our government and our courts ? An armed ves- 
sel exercising force against the ship of a foreign State on the high 
seas must be one of three things — an enemy, a pirate, or a lawful 
belligerent. Was the Southern cruiser to be treated by the Eng- 
lish Government as an enemy ? On that supposition we should 
have been at war with the South. Is that what Mr. Bright 
desires ? But, if she was not an enemy, was she a pirate ? I will 
not condescend to argue such a question. It has been settled for 
more than three centuries. A people in revolt are entitled to all 
the rights of war against the sovereign, and, if to the rights of war 
against him, a fortiori against others. This matter and the rea- 



APPENDIX. 53 

sons of it are admirably expounded in the well-known chapter of 
VaLtel (B. III., cap. 18, § 287-293). Humanity and policy 
alike revolt at the idea of treating rebellion as piracy. The pas- 
sions and folly of enraged and baffled governments may induce 
them to employ such menaces, but they cannot and dare not exe- 
cute them. In that great landmark of English polities and Eng- 
lish literature, Mr. BurJ^e's letter to the sheriffs of Bristol, will be 
found the following passage, instinct with all the profound philoso- 
phy of a great political intellect : — 

" The persons who make a naval Avarfare upon us in conseciucnce of the 
present troubles may be rebels; but to treat- and call them piracies is con- 
founding not only the natural distinction of things, but the order of crimes^ 
which, whether by putting them from a higher part of the scale to the lower 
or from the lower to the higher, is never done without dangerously disorder- 
ing the whole frame of jurisprudence. The general sense of mankind tells 
me that these offences, which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue, are not 
in the class of infamous actions. If Lord Balmerino in the last rebellion had 
driven off the cattle of twenty clans I should have thought it would have been 
scandalous and low juggle utterly unworthy of the manliness of our English 
judicature to have tried him for felony as a stealer of cows." 

The Northern Government, it is true, threatened in the first 
instance to treat the Southern privateers as pirates ; but, even in 
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, he does not venture to assert that 
they can be so treated under the law of nations, but only under 
the municipal laws of the United States. The case was brought 
to the test in the instance of the crew of the Savannah privateer, 
who were tried at New York in 18G2, for piracy. The arguments 
are publialied at length in a report of the trial, for a copy of Avhich 
I am indebted to the eminent lawyer, Mr. Evarts, who represented 
the United States' Government on that occasion. The judge 
charged the jury that the ship could not be regarded as a pirate 
under the law of nations. And the government could not get a 
jury to convict on a municipal statute. 

In such a question the courts of law follow the action of the 
government. It is necessary for this, as well as for other reasons, 
that the government should declare its view to guide the courts of 
law. But the view of a government of a foreign country on such 



54 APPENDIX. 

a question can only be governed by the law of nations, and we have 
the authority of the American judges in this very conflict that by 
the law of nations a Southern privateer could not be treated as a 
pirate when exercising force against us. Well, then, if the South- 
ern cruisers could not be regarded as enemies, and could not be 
treated as pirates, we could only treat them as lawful belligerents. 
But if our government and our courts of law could only treat 
them as such, was it not of the most pressing and imminent impor- 
tance that all the subjects of the realm should know that they were 
clothed — not by an act, but by the law of nations — with the 
rights against neutrals which belong to such a character. 

But then, says Mr. Bright, " I don't dispute that you are right 
in acknowledging the South as belligerents, but you did it in too 
great a hurry — you might have waited a little longer." But 
why, in the name of common sense — why wait a single instant in 
a • matter so urgently affecting the rights of every subject of the 
Crown ? Why were the English merchantmen to wait to know 
whether they were to submit to be searched and captured alike by 
the Southern and the Northern cruisers ? Why were they to wait 
to know whether they might or might not carry arms and munitions 
of war in safety to New York or to New Orleans ? Why were 
they to wait to know whether there was or was not a lawful block- 
ade, and whether they might or might not sail in safety for Charles- 
ton or Mobile ? Why were English shipbuilders to wait to know 
whether they might or might not enter into contracts for the build- 
ing of ships of war without exposing themselves to fine and impris- 
onment ? Why were the courts of law to wait to know in what 
light they were to regard vessels or crews arraigned before them 
for forcible seizures at sea ? Why were the Admirals on all our 
stations abroad to wait to know in what manner they were to treat 
the cruisers of the North and of the South — whether they were 
to regard the ships of the former as inarine trespassers exercising 
rights over our merchantmen which could only be justified by a 
state of war, and whether they were to attack and destroy the 
Southern privateers as pirates, or to respect them as lawful bellig- 
erents ? And on what pretence, I should hke to ask, were ques- 
tions to us of such momentous importance to be kept in suspense ? 



APPENDIX. 55 

Because, forsooth, Mr. Dallas did not like to be troubled on busi- 
ness, and Mr. Adams had not yet arrived. In the name of com- 
mon sense, why was the English Government to wait in order to 
consult Mr. Adams as to notifying to the subjects of the Queen the 
consequences to them of a fact which Mr. Lincoln had proclaimed 
to the world in his declaration of blockade twenty-four days previ- 
ously ? If Mr. Adams must necessarily have assented to the pro- 
priety of the proclamation, why was it necessary to discuss the 
matter with him ? But if he had protested against it, would it 
have been proper or possible in the English Government to have 
paid any heed to his remonstrance ? Mr. Bright complains of the 
unfriendly conduct of the English Government, and the shock Mr. 
Adams must have received when " he arrived in London on May 
13, and when he opened his newspaper the next morning he found 
it contained the proclamation of neutrality, and the acknowledg- 
ment of the belligerent rights of the South." But why should 
Mr. Adams be shocked or surprised by the contents of his news- 
paper of May 13, 1861 ? He had arrived from America by the 
very mail which brought Lord Lyon's despatch and the several 
proclamations of President Lincoln and President Davis. The 
proclamation of the Queen conveyed no news to Mr. Adams. He 
had sought, no doubt, in his despatch for Mr. Lincoln's proclama- 
tion of April 19, which, in claiming the belligerent right of block- 
ade for the North, in fact, declared the belligerent rights of the 
South. He could have had no cause to complain that on May 13 
the Queen should explain to her subjects the consequence to them 
of a state of things which its own chief had created and declared 
by his proclamation three weeks before. To make such a transac- 
tion a ground of complaint is really to reproduce the old fable of the 
wolf and the lamb drinking at the same stream. Sir, I do Mr. 
Adams (whose wise and prudent courtesy and equanimity has been 
of such signal service to his own country and to ours) the justice 
to believe that turbulent politicians on both sides of the Atlantic 
make an unauthorized use of his name when they represent him as 
having been treated with want of consideration in this transaction. 
We acknowledge the belligerent rights of the South because the 
Government of the United States by making war upon the land at 



56 APPENDIX. 

once created and declared their rights as inherent in them. We 
acknowledged their rights because those rights existed, and existed 
entirely independently of any action of ours. We could have 
done no otherwise, even if we would. When a riot takes place in 
the street the neutral tradesman puts up his shutters. He ac- 
knowledges thereby the riot, it is true ; but one party to the tumult 
has no right to complain that the tradesman either aggravates the 
riot or gives assistance thereby to his antagonist. It is a little too 
bad that he should at the same time be made to lose his custom, 
and also be abused for attempting to protect his property. 

The North created belligerent rights in both parties by making 
war upon the South. The North have enjoyed their rights and we 
have indorsed them. They have seized our merchantmen and crip- 
pled our trade, and they have had a right to do it. If the South 
had not had belligerent rights it could only be because there was 
no war. But if there was no war, then the North could have en- 
forced no blockade, they could have seized no combatant, they 
could have made no prizes. English merchants might have traded 
as before to Charleston and Wilmington and Savannah and Mobile 
and New Orleans with impunity. To have seized our ships would 
have been to make war on England. If there had been no war, 
Mr. Laird might have equipped for the South live hundred Ala- 
bamas without interference. This is what the North have gained. 
But war is a quarrel which necessarily requires two sides. In 
order to exercise belligerent rights yourself, ycu must have an 
antagonist, and that antagonist must have belligerent rights also. 
A id yet it is this just and inevitable conseuuonce of their own 
policy which the North seem disposed to lay at our doors, and to 
make a ground of complamt against us. 

I must again apologize for expounding at this length a matter 
which to most of your readers will appear obvious and self-evident. 
But I am too well aware of the unhappy irritatiori which exists on 
the subject in the public mind ot Ameiica not to desire to offer the 
smallest contribution towa^'d its removal. Ignor:nce unfortunately 
is as fertile a source of mischief as malevolence itself. Nothing 
can be regarded as trivial which either fosters or may tend to tran- 
quilUze the feelings of exasperation which agitate a proud and sus- 



APPENDIX. 57 

ceptihle people. There are, nnliappily, too many persons on hoth 
sides of the Atlantic who inrlulge themselves in the wicked and 
dangerous amusement of inflaming passions which they ought to 
soothe, and exasperating prejudices and misapprehensions which 
they ought to labor to remove. Sir, I do not envy these men the 
occupation they propose to themselves, nor the success which, alas ! 
they too often achieve. My ambition is of quite another sort. I 
desire by a recourse to those fixed and ascertained principles of 
law and maxims of justice which are enshrined in the records of 
nations and the conscience of mankind, as the perpetual arbiters of 
truth and of peace, to remonstrate against an unreasonable anger 
and an unjust animosity. Surely, sir, these evil tongues, which 
are like a sharp sword, may rest sated with the blood they have 
helped [maK'e?] to flow. Sat prata hiherunt. Let us appeal from 
these grievance-mongers, who trade in fancied wrongs and un- 
founded injuries, to the reason, the good sense, the good humor, 
and the justice of a kindred nation, which " is bone of our bone 
and flesh of our flesh." 

Temple, March 18. HiSTORicus. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 700 952 3 



